X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

The claws are the tell. In a film built to explain how Logan got them, the adamantium blades arrive as weightless computer graphics that bend and shimmer against the actor's forearms, and once you notice it you cannot stop noticing everything else the production failed to get right. Gavin Hood shoots the Weapon X program as a series of briefings and betrayals, each one flattening a character who was far more interesting as a rumour.

Liev Schreiber is the single genuine pleasure here, playing Victor Creed with a predatory stillness that suggests a much better film about two brothers who cannot die. Around him the script hands Ryan Reynolds a promising smart mouth and then sews it shut, literally, converting Wade Wilson into a mute laser-eyed thing for a rooftop climax on a cooling tower. Danny Huston's Stryker explains his motivation in paragraphs.

Lynn Collins is asked to carry a romance that exists only to justify a revenge plot. Jackman commits completely, roaring through a helicopter chase and walking away from an explosion without looking back, and his conviction is the only continuity the picture has. The escape from the Weapon X tank has real menace for about ninety seconds before the movie remembers it has six more origin stories to service.