“The Wolverine” is the sixth time Hugh Jackman has played the adamantium-laced, clawed, mutton chopped character of Logan, a.k.a. the Wolverine, and the overall quality of the movie aside, this may be my favorite portrayal of this character to date. Focusing on his gift slash curse of healing and pretty much being immortal and his deep sense of loss and loneliness that has built up over the years, this movie is free to get into Logan’s damaged psyche and really dig in the character and what makes him tick, and in the long run it pays off.

“The Wolverine” is a sequel to (the god awful) “X-Men: The Last Stand,” in that Wolverine’s love interest Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is dead and the rest of the X-Men are pretty much disbanded, leaving Logan all by himself (they also seem to pretty much ignore “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which is somehow even worse than “X-Men: The Last Stand“). He is literally wandering from town to town, living in the wilderness, looking like a crazy person, and it’s sad to think about such a powerful person just hiding out and having nightmares every night about horrible things that happened in his life. They hit this pretty hard, but obviously it must be horrible to live forever because you get to watch people you care about die all around you, and even if you meet new people and start to care about them, they are going to die eventually as well, and you’ll outlive them all, and that’s a bummer. How many times can you lose people before you stop trying to connect to them anymore?Continue Reading …