X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Spin off movies under the ‘X-Men Origins’ brand were being mooted even before ‘The Last Stand’. The three characters being talked up for their own movie were Wolverine, Magneto and Deadpool. Deadpool hadn’t played a part in the previous films, so there was a creative clean slate to be worked from.

I would have been happy with a Deadpool origins movie. I would have been, pardon my language, fucking ecstatic with a Magneto origins movie, particularly as a script was announced as early as 2004, with writer Sheldon Turner describing it as “ ‘The Pianist’ meets ‘X-Men’.” It was rumoured that a younger actor would play the role, with McKellan returning for a sequence that would bookend the film.

‘X-Men Origins: Magneto’ never happened. They made ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ instead. And to be fair, it has one thing in its favour: it’s not ‘The Last Fucking Stand’. Although, to be accurate, it does have a hell of a lot working against it. Not least a muddled pre-credits sequence set in 1845 that has James Logan and Victor Creed (later Sabretooth) as half-brothers, family secrets brought to light, the first appearance of Logan’s claws (here animalistic bone-like things), and the antagonistic quasi-siblings on the run. All good dramatic stuff, or it would be if the script gave the sequence time to breathe. As it is, it’s rushed, melodramatic and unconvincing, setting the tone for much of what’s to follow.

What immediately follows it’s a truly horrible montage of the now adult Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Creed (Liev Schreiber) battling their way through the Civil War, the First World War (terrible terrible CGI), World War II (an Omaha beach vignette that’s about as far removed from ‘Saving Private Ryan’ as possible) and Vietnam. Throughout, Creed seems to enjoy fighting and killing a little too much. The Vietnam episode details Creed’s attempted rape of a village girl, Logan’s reluctant defence of him and their joint execution by firing squad. When it’s discovered that they’re completely impervious to a fusillade of bullets, they’re turned over to Major William Stryker (Danny Huston), who’s leading a black ops consisting of mutants: sniper Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), Chris Bradley (Dominic Monaghan) who can manipulate electrical systems, human battering ram Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), swordsman Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), and John Wraith (will.i.am) whose ability is teleportation. After a mission during which Stryker goes to increasingly violent lengths to recover an object of extraterrestrial origin, Wolverine quits in disgust and tries to settle into a normal lifestyle. Six years later he’s working as a lumberjack and – … but what’s that you say?

American troops withdrew from Vietnam in 1975? Yup, that’s right. And Stryker’s already a major at this point looks about 40? Uh-huh. And he’s already heading up an off-the-books research facility instead of “flying black ops in the jungle of North Vietnam” as per his iconic line in ‘X-2’? Well, yes. And doesn’t ‘X-2’ mark a more-or-less linear continuation from ‘X-Men’, which was released in 2000 and described as being set in “the not-too-distant future”? Umm, yeah. So, if we’re generous and assume that ‘X-2’ is set in, oh 2005, and Styker’s in his mid-fifties in that film, shouldn’t he have been about 19 or 20 when he was in ’Nam?

Or I am just being a pedant?

Let’s call it on the pedantry front and move on. But mark this down, folks, as but the first of many continuity fuck-ups that franchise will now insist on doling out. Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, it’s six years later and Logan’s working as a lumberjack and playing house with too-good-to-be-true school teacher Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins, cast after Michelle Monaghan dropped out and presumably cast because she looks a bit like Michelle Monaghan; God knows it wasn’t for the acting talent), when all of a sudden Stryker turns up at the logging camp and warns him that someone’s targeting the old team. Logan dismisses him, only for Creed to come crashing back into his life and suddenly Kayla’s in danger.

Long story short, Logan reluctantly allows himself to be experimented on by Stryker as a result of which his bone like claws are replaced by sword-like blades of Sheffield steel adamantium, the properties of which – Stryker assures him – will give him the edge over Creed. When Logan, now fully transformed into Wolverine, goes beserk after the procedure, Stryker panics and orders Agent Zero and a strike team to neutralise him. This, needless to say, ends badly for Stryker’s men, and Wolverine sets out to track down the remaining members of the team in order to find first Creed then Stryker and settle both scores.

While Wolverine braces Wraith and Dukes, Stryker and Creed track down a teenage Scott Summers (Tim Pocock) – i.e. Cyclops – and haul him off to a top secret research facility in order to – … but what’s that you say?

Cyclops was late 20s, tops, in ‘X-Men’? Yep. And even allowing that Logan worked with Stryker’s team for three or four years before he quit (although the film makes it look like he quits after just one mission), the events of ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ can’t really take place any later than the mid-1980s? Sure: can’t argue with the maths. So Cyclops would be pushing forty in ‘X-Men’?

Again, let’s chalk this one up to pedantry and move on.

(SPOILER alert) Where were we? Oh yes: Logan braces Wraith and Dukes. Wraith spills that after Wolverine left the outfit, Stryker had them hunting their “own kind”; Dukes confirms that captured mutants were taken to “the island” and experimented on, specifically that Stryker was trying to combine their powers. Dukes puts Logan onto a mutant called Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), notable for being the only incarcerated mutant to escape from the island. After some initial antagonism, Wolverine persuades Gambit to take him to the island, but not before another attack from Creed during which Wraith is killed. Reaching the facility, Wolverine learns the full extent of Stryker’s treachery – Wolverine was simply a prototype to see if a mutant could withstand the adamantium injection – and finds himself up against Wade, now reborn as Deadpool. Deadpool’s combined powers are the adamantium blades Wolverine has, Cyclops’s ability to shoot fire from his eyes, and Wraith’s ability to teleport. Only Wraith was never at the island, so fuck the audience, fuck continuity, and sit quietly while director Gavin Hood and writers David Benioff and Skip Woods slap you in the face with plotholes, inconsistencies and downright laziness. Oh by the way, he’s Hugh Jackman’s walnut-crackingly firm arse to keep you distracted while they fob you off and take your money. (SPOILERS end. Ditto rant.)

‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ has very little to recommend it. Schreiber doesn’t so much over-egg it as make the world’s biggest omelette. Huston is trade-down of epic proportions following Brian Cox’s characterisation of Stryker in ‘X-2’. Collins grins self-consciously at the camera and delivers utilitarian line readings. Tahyna Tozzi, as Kayla’s sister, awkwardly sets up the Emma Frost character (cue discontinuity in the next instalment). Patrick Stewart has a last-minute cameo (Xavier still has the use of his legs; cue more discontinuity in the next instalment); he was digitally manipulated to look younger, but the process was done badly and he looks like the Mekon in those on Dan Dare comics. Even Hugh Jackman’s performance is little more than scenery-chewing; it’s certainly a far cry from the cynical, temperamental yet always human Wolverine of the previous outings.

There are, however, a couple of halfway decent action scenes. The action is shot and edited a lot more clearly than in ‘Last Stand’. The hour and three quarter running time is acceptable. Durand and will.i.am have a lot of fun with their characters. Like I said, not much to recommend it. But enough to edge away from the rank stench of its predecessor and jingle the requisite amount of tills at the box office to make the next episode viable.

PERSONAL FAVES: The Constant Gardener

Posted to coincide with Fernando Meirelles’ 56th birthday


Reviewing ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ got me thinking about how well-served John le Carre has been in terms of adaptations. The seven-part TV adaptation of that novel, starring Alec Guinness, is one of the small screen’s finest achievements. It’s big screen counterpart is arguably a classic-in-waiting. Martin Ritt’s ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ is one of the bleakest, most compelling cinematic renderings of the spy story, with a blistering performance from Richard Burton – one of his best.

Even the second tier of le Carre adaptations – Fred Schepisi’s ‘The Russia House’, George Roy Hill’s ‘The Little Drummer Girl’, John Boorman’s ‘The Tailor of Panama’ – are perfectly accomplished and entertaining films. There’s no reason to suspect that Anton Corbijn’s ‘A Most Wanted Man’ – currently in pre-production – will be anything less than a class act.

But above all of these – albeit only by a very short head where ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ and ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ are concerned – is Fernando Meirelles’ ‘The Constant Gardener’, a riveting thriller, a humanitarian manifesto and a j’accuse against corporate greed and political chicanery. A beautiful and emotionally devastating work of cinema.


An opening scene peppered with lacunae gives us a deserted stretch of African coastal road, an overturned vehicle, men piling out of a jeep. The next scene has junior diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) learning of the death of his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) from his seemingly avuncular superior Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston). Tessa was quite the humanitarian – aid worker, activist; the kind of person it would be easily to mislabel a bleeding heart liberal except that the woman had the tenacity of a particularly stubborn bulldog. As well as an unfortunate tendency to rub Justin’s British High Commission colleagues up the wrong way.

The nature of how this extremely unlikely couple got together is the subject of an extended flashback. And as unlikely as their romance is, Meirelles’ portrayal of it is natural, convincing, unforced. It helps, of course, that Fiennes and Weisz – two actors who have never given a bad performance – are on absolute top form here. Weisz’s Academy Award was one of those stand-up-and-applaud moments of Oscar getting it right.


With the murder mystery element in place, and genuine emotionalism underpinning it, Meirelles begins to unravel – unhurriedly but with a palpable sense of tension – a complex web of deceit, secrecy, underhandedness and naïve political allegiance. In one of the most telling moments, a morally compromised but jingoistically indefatigable politico weighs the unholy alliance between government and pharmaceutical corporation in terms of 1,500 British jobs. Murder, conspiracy, malpractice and the violation of a depressed country’s already beleaguered human rights. But 1,500 British jobs, so what ho chaps?

Le Carre’s novel – his best, for my money – is that rarest of beasts: a literary thriller that powers through its narrative with balls-out ferocity; and an incredibly elegant piece of writing that nonetheless seethes with righteous outrage. And so it should. From the existential despair of Alex Leamas in ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ to the moment of almost unwitting complicity on which his latest novel ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ turns, John le Carre has, throughout his career, transcended the inherent cynicism of the espionage drama and grappled with the thorny moral conundrums at the heart of his characters’ tarnished lives.


If, however, le Carre approaches the material from the perspective of an Englishman sick of the snobbery and the bullshit and the old school tie network and all the sneaky nasty little things that are done by the establishment supposedly for the good of all, then Meirelles brings to the table the authenticity and immediacy of his breakthrough film, the magnificent ‘City of God’. With these two movies – ‘The Constant Gardener’ was his follow-up – Meirelles took shaky-cam to an art-form. The African scenes are vibrant, alive, as gorgeous as they are harrowing. Elsewhere, though, he knows when to step back from the action, when to frame his actors in long-shot. When to hold a shot and just let it play out, an all too rare capacity in contemporary filmmaking. Simply put, every frame of ‘The Constant Gardener’ contributes to its whole.

Two other things to mention: the film was produced by Simon Channing Williams, who died two years; le Carre’s latest novel is dedicated in memoriam. Whilst filming on location in Nairobi, the cast and crew were so appalled at the levels of poverty that they established The Constant Gardener Trust (go here and be amazed at what the Trust has achieved), of which le Carre, Meirelles, Weisz and Fiennes are patrons.

One great work of literature; one great work of cinema; one awe-inspiring humanitarian organisation. That’s a pretty good batting average.

The Aviator

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: biopics / In category: 3 of 10 / Overall: 65 of 100

While there is plenty to love about ‘Gangs of New York’ – the vast sets, the awesome opening sequence, Daniel Day Lewis in excelsis – it suffers from Leonardo di Caprio’s central performance. I still identified him back then as the floppy-haired romantic lead (albeit with a handful of interesting indie turns in his filmography) whose poster was di rigueur on the walls of teenage girls the world over. In ‘Gangs of New York’, he didn’t have the physicality, didn’t have the threat. His was a role that the younger de Niro would have torn into. For that reason, ‘Gangs’ never quite achieved what I wanted it to – the status of late-period Scorsese masterpiece that I’d been waiting for over a decade.

When ‘The Aviator’ was released, I approached it warily. It was an inherited project – Scorsese had only intended to produce, with Michael Mann calling the shots; Mann, however, decided he didn’t want to make another biopic so soon after ‘Ali’ and Scorsese took the helm – and it reunited the director with di Caprio. I was blown away. Sure, there are some minor quibbles (it’s slightly overlong, the CGI during the flight of the “Spruce Goose” is a bit wobbly), but ‘The Aviator’ has energy, visual opulence and a to-die-for cast pulling out all the stops.

Di Caprio’s portrayal of Howard Hughes completely sold me on him as an actor and he just seems to have gone from strength to strength since. Cate Blanchett is fantastic as Katherine Hepburn (I love the way Scorsese shapes some of her scenes, such as the banter on the golf course or the rat-a-tat-tat dialogue around the dinner table, as homages to Hepburn’s own movies), while Kate Beckinsale pulls off a sexy, sultry, don’t-mess-with-me approximation of Ava Gardner. Rounding out the cast are such luminaries as John C. Reilly, Alan Alda, Danny Huston, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Frances Conroy and always excellent Ian Holm, one of my personal favourite actors. There’s even a cameo from No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow – she doesn’t do much, but she nails Harlow’s look perfectly.

Scorsese handles the long running time (a shade over two and three quarter hours) masterfully, structuring the first third as an exhilarating immersion into the world of Hughes’ key obsessions – aircraft, movies, women – and seducing the audience with his charisma and playboy lifestyle. This stage of the movie contains most of the spectacular flying sequences, culminating in the mechanical failure and devastating crash of a test plane that Hughes insists on piloting himself. The middle stretch is heralded by aftermath of the crash. Things go wrong for Hughes: he loses Hepburn; his relationship with Gardner turns into a miasma of jealousy and suspicion; senate hearings coincide with his deteriorating mental state and increasingly obsessive and reclusive behaviour. The final third charts Hughes’s hermit-like withdrawal from the world; his phobia of dirt, germs and human contact. Things are almost redeemed when he emerges to pilot the “Spruce Goose”, his most ambitious undertaking in the field of avionics, but history is waiting to write it up as a magnificent folly.

‘The Aviator’ is full-tilt filmmaking, often flamboyant and indulgent, but also intuitively attuned to character moments and not afraid to follow its subject into his darkest times. Scorsese eschews the mannered, plodding, heavily expository approach that typifies many biopics. He maintains focus and a linear through-line without ever sacrificing narrative drive, pacing or the audience’s attention span. If all biopics were this good, I probably wouldn’t be so reticent about the genre.

30 Days of Night

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: films with numbers in the title / In category: 6 of 10 / Overall: 63 of 100

On paper, David Slade’s Alaska-set vampire opus has the elements of golden age John Carpenter: a small community beset by supernatural forces (a la ‘The Fog’); a wintery, isolated setting (a la ‘The Thing’); a small group of protagonists pinned down and outnumbered (a la ‘Assault on Precinct 13’). When ’30 Days of Night’ was screened on Film Four last night, I was rubbing my hands in glee at the prospect of an old-school horror movie with the suspense factor ramped up to the max.

And to be fair, the first half hour works well. Slade demonstrates an admirable economy in setting up the locale and introducing his characters: we’ve got Sheriff Eben Olesen (Josh Hartnett), his estranged wife Stella (the excellent Melissa George), his brother Jake (Mark Rendall), truculent loner Beau Brower (Mark Boone Jnr) and a handful of other townsfolk. A stranger shows up, massacres the huskies, sabotages the helicopter, fucks up phone and internet connectivity and essentially cuts the town off from the outset world.

All this on the last day of sunlight, when the residents are battening down the hatches for 30 days of – … well, the clue’s in the title. Eben arrests the stranger, but it turns out he’s only the vanguard. A bunch of vampires, lead by the ruthless Marlow (Danny Huston), hit town as soon as the darkness descends. Most of the populace are massacred (and drained of the old plasma) in short order, leaving a – yup! – small group of mismatched survivors under the increasingly strained leadership of Eben to hole up and try to stay alive.

The remainder of the film jumps from day seven to day eighteen to day twenty-seven. Some of the incident in these sequences seems to span two or three days. By my reckoning (although I must confess I gave the film less and less of my attention the longer it limped on), the vampires get their fill of virtually all the townspeople on the first couple of nights, then there are gaps of a week or so before they pick off one or two of the survivors. Which beggars the question: why stick around so long when the pickings are so slim? Moreoever – SPOILER ALERT – when the vampires decide to burn the place to the ground, both to drive out the remaining survivors and to cover their tracks, they do so on the last day of full dark. Why not do so earlier? Surely they’ve got a fair bit of travelling to do before the sun comes up. They did their main feeding the first two nights, why not make a sustained push to drive out the survivors, finish them off, burn the town and get the fuck out of Do— … er, Alaska by the end of the first week? Who knows, maybe there’s another small town cloaked in darkness for a month and they could stop off for desserts before heading back to wherever they came from? (The vampires speak something that sounds like a combination of Serbian, Vulcan and elvish, their horribly portentous dialogue rendered in subtitles.) END SPOILER.

‘30 Days of Night’ has a higher ratio of characters doing stupid fucking things than any horror movie I’ve ever seen. If the vampires don’t seem like the sharpest tools in the box, well they’re practically MENSA material compared to the people. The day seven incident where some old timer decides he wants to go for a walk – despite the fact that there’s a blizzard outside as well as a bunch of hungry fucking vampires – necessitating his son to race out into the street after him yelling “Daaaaaaaaaad!” at the top of his voice until the neck-biters descend on him, had me face-palming in disbelief. Later, Eben and his merry band up sticks from the attic they’ve holed up in and make a dash for the general store. You know, a place that’s full of food, drink, provisions, supplies. Cut to day eighteen. Apparently, there’s been no vampire activity for several days. Judging from how well stocked the shelves are, our heroes still seem to have plenty of victuals on hand. They’re warm, they’re safe, they’ve got twelve days left till the sun comes up and the bloodsuckers vamoose. So what does Eben decide? “We can’t stay here. We have to move.” No word of explanation, no murmur of protest. Seriously, not one of these goobers raises a hand and says, “Er, excuse me, pretty boy sheriff dude. One question: fucking why?” No, they just get behind numbnuts with the badge and gun and blithely risk life and limb as they make a pointless dash to another location.

I could go on. I could talk about the massive discrepancy in how long it takes a bitten human to turn. (It seems to be anywhere between seconds and entire freakin’ days.) I could bemoan the relentless seriousness of it all and the lack of emotional engagement with most of the characters (only Stella comes across as remotely empathetic and that’s mainly due to Melissa George’s performance). I could point out the misogyny: vampires can apparently feed off a male victim quickly and efficiently; to a man who’s just tried to kill them, they can administer the coup de grace swiftly; but when they’ve got a woman at their mercy, they slap her around for a while before breaking out the fangs. What the fuck, nosferatu dudes, isn’t it enough just to kill your victims?

I could go on, but I’ve already demolished my remit of sticking to short 500 word posts during this bank holiday weekend splurge of reviewing. Let’s leave it at this: ’30 Days of Night’ had the potential to be great; unfortunately, it just grates.