Film Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and Crank)

Yesterday (Friday) I managed to watch two films. In the afternoon I watched the leaked workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I liked the X-Men trilogy but sold the DVD set when I needed the money. I didn't think that a Wolverine movie would be anything more than a cash-in. And I wasn't wrong. This print of the film lacks a few FX shots (and has animatics in place instead) and lacks 10-20 minutes of pickup shots. One can see why they might have watched this print of the film and realised that they needed to add more to it.

It plays like a big budget TV movie. The film shoes Wolverine being a couple of hundred years old, fighting in in successive wars with his brother Liev Shrieber playing someone named Sabretooth who appears to a less advanced version of Wolverine - he has the same skills except that he had claws that grow from his fingers rather than the knife-like things which grow out of Wolverine's knuckles. The brother's fighting ability in Vietnam is recognised by some kind of CIA/Military organisation who them to form an elite group with other muscle bound fighting mutants. Wolverine questions the ethics of the organisation and leaves his slightly more evil brother behind. Wolverine seeks solace in an American cliche by chopping logs in remote Canada because he's that manly. Wolverine has settled down with a woman and we finally get the inciting incident to get the plot going.

The film is not a total mess but it's badly paced. It's not that it's slow but incidents happen in the wrong place. Once the plot get going there's a set piece after set piece which are enjoyable enough until we reach the twist laden climax. Perhaps the new scenes will rescue the film but the filmmakers will need to consider cutting down the first half an hour of the film.

In the evening I watched Crank. I have a wide selection of films I've never seen but I had been drawn to the absurdity of the plot and scenario since it came out. It is as ridiculous and absurd as I expected but it has the good grace to do so with a sense of humour and to execute it in a cartoon-like fashion. I'd be in no rush to watch it again but if I was channel hopping one night, I might not turn it off.