'The Wolverine': Movie Review

Hugh Jackman has the role of the mutant superhero down pat, but the rest of the film is the same old slice and dice

Ben Rothstein

Logan's (Hugh Jackman) adamantium claws are more than a match for ninja steel.

In a summer of seemingly ageless superheroes, Wolverine stands alone.

Unlike Superman, the Lone Ranger, Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock, this eternally young mutant has been played by only one actor, Hugh Jackman. Good thing the Aussie star has the role down to a science, since the rest of "The Wolverine" is a howler.

Jackman rolled out Wolverine in 2000's "X-Men." In 2009, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was all backstory, forcing this new flick to follow-up 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand." (You need to have mutant powers to keep it all straight.)

A prelude shows the stogie-chomping, bone-clawed mutant known as Logan helping a Japanese soldier survive the atomic blast at Nagasaki. Then we flash-forward to the present day, with Logan living in the Yukon to escape his memories of having killed his true love, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, who cameos here as a ghostly vision from beyond).

Then a mysterious woman, Yukio (Rila Fukushima), finds him to say the now-aged soldier he saved in 1945 is on his deathbed and wants to see him. Once there, Logan gets embroiled in a melodrama involving the yakuza, the snake-like mutant Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), the old soldier's family and a plan to steal Logan's fast-healing power.

Jackman, like Sean Connery after six turns as James Bond, wears Logan like a second skin - his scowl alone says a thousand words. Logan is both the ultimate X-Man and the audience's stand-in, and Jackman never loses sight of either side of his signature role. It's put to best use in a scene where he has to extract a weapon from his own heart.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film becomes standard slice-and-dice, all the way to the ridiculous ending involving a baddie in adamantium armor. Director James Mangold ("Heavy," "Walk the Line") deals with human-scale emotions, and as much as he and the screenwriters try, there's a constant battle between Jackman's wounded, mutton-chopped masculinity and the requisite silliness of a superhero flick. They never gel.

There's the usual villain problem (too many of them - and none of them memorable) and a tone that may take parents of young Wolverine fans by surprise: In the first 10 minutes alone, a nuke goes off, Jean is gored by Logan in a dream and someone gets an arrow through the hand. This is comic-book stuff for adults, not kids.

Wolverine himself remains a haunted figure - lonely as a werewolf, deadly as Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name - but there's only so much sympathy we can give him. He thinks he's out, and people obsessed with mutants pull him back in. Then he snarls, they're gored and we're bored.

jneumaier@nydailynews.com