Based, rather more loosely than anyone involved has yet admitted, on the classic Chris Claremont/Frank Miller Wolverine miniseries, The Wolverine sees the character summoned to Japan by an old friend, whereupon he becomes embroiled in a war of succession within the Yashida clan. Director James Mangold has melded this plot with some musings on the character’s near-immortality to create a comic book movie that (for the most part) avoids the standard genre tropes and feels more like a Gaijin-in-Japan action movie than yet another superhero blockbuster. If you’re feeling fatigued by tights, suits and capes, this may be the antidote. Mangold’s version of Wolverine is probably the most interesting yet. At the outset, we find Logan in a dark place following the (admittedly distant) events of X-Men: The Last Stand. Lost for direction, he’s feeling the effects of powers that keep him alive while those around him die. The trailed appearances by an ethereal Jean Grey anchor the film in the X-Men universe, but in the context of the film she could be any past love. This is a movie largely intended to stand alone, and which – in keeping with the mutant metaphor – focuses on super-powers as a curse as much as a blessing. Without giving anything away, even though one of the subplot choices the film makes is familiar, The Wolverine gets it right. Whatever happens, Logan is still Wolverine, and the film consistently remembers that to its credit. By varying degrees, this is actually a story about who he is, not what he can do. It’s dark but not humourless, pensive but not slow, and keeps a tight focus on Logan’s arc as he finds new things to live for. In truth, there are one or two problems before that. There are parts where the script gets clunky, there are sequences where the camera work renders the action tough to decipher, and the script is fastidious in making sure all of the subtext is rendered into text just in case you’re concerned you might have to engage your brain. As a fun game, you might also want to count the times someone makes a Japanese cultural reference and then immediately explains it in layman’s terms (with bonus points for spotting the one they do twice). But for the most part this is a good movie. It gets Wolverine in a way that the last film completely failed to. It has something to say about the character, and it says it. Because of that, we can mostly forgive the bizarre tone shift of the final reel, or the tics that weaken its presentation. Please, if you can, buy our charity horror stories ebook, Den Of Eek!, raising money for Geeks Vs Cancer. Details here.