Up until its over-the-top, meta-power-laden ending, The Wolverine is so unlike the prototypical superhero genre film one wishes it were as good in execution as it is conceptually. As dark and exotic as its setting in Japan promises, much of The Wolverine plays like a 70s style crime thriller with the feral Logan (Hugh Jackman) in the role of the gaijin outsider in over his head. Echoes abound of Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1974) and Ridley Scott's Black Rain (1989), both films featuring a world where ritual is inextricably tied to methods of conducting business and clan warfare starring deceptively low-key Japanese actors who outflank their iconic American co-stars. And at least in this role, after his unprecedented fifth outing as Wolverine (sixth if you count his X-Men: First Class cameo), Jackman has crossed over into something close to superhero icon.
