X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

by Nick Schager
Posted: April 29, 2009

ox may have been robbed of box-office booty when a leaked workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine landed online last month, but the real victim of theft in this ordeal seems to have been the adamantium-clawed Canuck himself. Purists will surely bristle at the alterations made by Gavin Hood's prequel to the origin story of feral Canadian mutant Logan (Hugh Jackman). Yet far more troubling than the specifics surrounding his transformation into the nearly indestructible Wolverine is the film's fundamentally wishy-washy characterization of its protagonist, whose inherent animalism is oft-mentioned but never witnessed. In an attempt to pay lip service to his inner struggle with unseemly bestial instincts while simultaneously maintaining his unquestionable heroism, Wolverine turns its future X-Man into a blandly brooding bore too grumpy to be a prototypical do-gooder yet too noble to be a cold-blooded antihero.

Such indecisiveness is married to a more wide-ranging lack of imagination, as Hood expends so much time and energy on stuffing his narrative full of lame cameos of fan-favorite mutants—including wise-cracking assassin Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and ragin' Cajun Gambit (Taylor Kitsch)—that his combat centerpieces receive embarrassingly short shrift, and in the case of a boxing match between Wolverine and the Blob, also devolve into cartoonishness. With the exception of an adequate helicopter attack, the action is perfunctory and forgettable, albeit no more so than the script's range of clichés, whether they be shots of Wolverine screaming in anguish to the heavens (employed three times!), stoically walking away from a fiery explosion, or standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his squadmates.

Once Wolverine escapes the fish tank where his former government employer General Stryker (a pleasantly menacing Danny Huston) has bonded his skeleton with unbreakable adamantium, Hood indulges in an interlude featuring Ma and Pa Kent photocopies that throws into sharp relief the film's lack of identity. After rewriting numerous character backstories without any appreciable gain, most notably in the case of Wolverine's antagonistic central relationship to bloodthirsty brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber), Hood concludes matters by interjecting some real-world history into his throwback proceedings by bizarrely positing Wolverine as responsible for the Three Mile Island disaster. The catastrophic capper is apt.

Russian Retrospective Features 1936 Film Indicting American Racism

For my money, Circus (1936) is the standout in a Russian retrospective of five films each featuring Lyubov Orlova (1902-1975), The First Lady of the Soviet Screen. This series of what some might call Communist propaganda pictures is being hosted by The Film Society of Lincoln Center in Manhattan and will run from May 1st to 4th. The collection is entitled Red Diva because they were made in the U.S.S.R. where Ms. Orlova was something of a cultural icon.

Besides Circus, the offerings include Moscow Laughs (1934), The Shining Path (1940), Volga Volga (1938) and Spring (1947). I was fortunate to watch several of the films with friends who speak Russian and their explanation of each one's cultural context certainly served to enhance my appreciation of the stories.

Circus opens in the United States with a harrowing chase scene in which a popular circus performer named Marion Dixon (Orlova) is literally being run out of town on a rail with a baby (Jim Patterson) in her arms by a bloodthirsty lynch mob. Why? Because she's white, and the father of her child is black.

With chants of "nigger lover" filling the air, she barely escapes with her life by jumping on a moving train. Forced to flee from her own country alone, the disgraced single-mom ultimately finds political asylum in Moscow where she is able to resume working as The Human Bullet, a vaudeville act in which she sings, dances before the big finale during which she is shot out of a cannon into a trapeze net.

In the Soviet Union, Marion is managed by Von Kneishitz (N. Massalasky), a racist foreigner whose mind is unfortunately already infected by Hitler's sick notions of white supremacy. But when she rebuffs his romantic advances in favor of Ivan (Sergei Stolyarov), a younger, more handsome and more open-minded local lad, the jilted German decides to ruin her career by embarrassing her in a very public fashion.

Von interrupts the circus in the middle of Marion's performance to announce to the crowd that she "was the mistress of a Negro and gave birth to a black child," whereupon he produces the toddler as proof. But while blacks and whites mating might have been both taboo and illegal in the U.S. and Deutschland back in the Thirties, the bigoted buffoon gets the surprise of his life when he is booed out of the arena by the entire audience which responds with catcalls like, "So what!" and "What's the tragedy?"

Meanwhile, the women in attendance take turns singing a lullaby to Marion's frightened baby whose tears are soon replaced by a big smile. To drive home the movie's salient message, a proud Russian patriot proceeds to explains to the Nazi in no uncertain terms that, "In our country, we absolutely love kids. You may have a kid of any color here: a black kid, a white kid, a red kid, or even a kid striped like a zebra, or polka-dotted. Whatever's your pleasure!"

A touching tale of tolerance that doesn't deserve to be dismissed as propaganda but rather elevated as a refreshing and more-enlightened alternative to the racist depictions of blacks that Hollywood was cranking out at the same time.

Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
In Russian and English with subtitles.
Running time: 94 minutes
Distributor: The Film Society of Lincoln Center