[4.9/10] Hello friends! Do you enjoy well-done but mostly pointless action? Do you like seeing people with superpowers fight each other for poorly-defined, mostly perfunctory reasons? Are you tired of things like characterization and plot getting in the way of explosions and hand-to-hand combat? If so, do I have the film for you!

*X-Men Origins: Wolverine*, the cumbersomely-titled first foray of the X-men films into solo spinoffs, earns its less-than-sterling reputation. That’s not to say it’s unwatchable. There is plenty of well-staged superhero action and enough things to laugh at even when the film isn’t genuinely good to keep it entertaining. But it is a giant mishmash of clichés, convoluted twists, and barely-sketched characters.

The best analogue for *XMO:W* (which, I maintain, should be pronounced “ex-moe”) is an eighties action film in the vein of a Rambo sequel. Take away the super powers (which most films in that genre seemed to pretend their protagonist had regardless), and this is pretty much a generic old school action hero story. The former soldier gets tired of the killing, tries to get away, and then goes on a revenge rampage against his former allies after they won’t let him out of the game.

Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, giving a performance with none of the charisma, charm, or gravitas he’d shown in other work in and outside the superhero genre) is a standard macho movie protagonist. He has his girl, he has muscles, and he just wants to be left alone. Of course, that can’t happen, and after a cheap fridging (and later, a ridiculous un-fridging) he’s back to his old ways.

The dialogue of the film matches the hackiness of its plot. Jackman spits out action flick one-liners like there was discount at the gently-used script shop down at the studio. No line is too hackneyed, no quip too generic, for *XMO:W* to include it in its cavalcade of tropes. The characters deliver exposition at awkward times that feel like the movie should have just put up a title card explaining what happened a la silent films. And if the loud, obvious dialogue doesn’t get you there on its own, the film will be sure to repeat any cheesy or silly lines to make sure you know that Wolverine is remembering them too.

Rest assured, *XMO:W* will not let its talented lead convey any internal emotions on its own. Instead, it’s quite content to use voiceover, clips from events that happened ten minutes ago, and supporting players restating obvious facts to make sure you know precisely what every major character is thinking or feeling in a given moment. Never has a film been so certain to telegraph each minor sentiment with so heavy a hand.

It doesn’t help that peppered in amid the four major characters (Wolverine, his brother Victor, his tormentor Stryker, and his girlfriend Kayla), are what seem to be and endless supply of shoehorned-in X-men who have more power than personality and are quickly run through as soon as they have enough screen time to justify an action figure.

Ryan Reynolds makes his debut as Deadpool, though the character bears little, if any resemblance to the fourth wall-breaking trickster who rocked the box office in his own solo spinoff. Instead, he gets a few solid quips before disappearing for the bulk of the movie and returning as an unrecognizable, uninteresting obstacle for Wolverine to overcome. Taylor Kitsch brings all the marble-mouthed woodenness of Tim Riggins to his portrayal of Gambit, a character who is supposed to be smooth and suave, and only succeeds in offering the worst Cajun accent you’ve heard this side of a community theatre version of *A Streetcar Named Desire*. The rest of the film’s disposable players range from the ridiculous (The Blob), to the flavorless (Zero), to the clearly overwhelmed in the acting department (Will.i.am).

So what does *XMO:W* do well? When it’s not trying to tell a story or create compelling characters, it can deliver some surprisingly effective action. While it’s pure cartoony ridiculous, the sequence where Wolverine fights his military-grade pursuers on a motorcycle is high-octane fun. Various fights between Logan and Victor have a certain heavyweight bout quality. And an early scene in the film where Wolvy, as part of an elite mutant strike force team, invade a building and take out its various guards in turn, provides well-choreographed, exaggerated but entertaining superhero fireworks.

The film’s opening is really where it soars. An opening scene from Logan’s childhood sets the stage for the nominal arc of the film where Wolverine tries to decide whether he’s an animal or a good person, and there’s urgency and punch in it. An introductory sequence of Wolverine and his brother in wars throughout the ages has a certain panache and verve otherwise missing in the rest of the film. And the few interactions between Wolverine and the rest of that strike team and in the early going create character dynamics and humor that are dropped in favor of paint-by-numbers one liners later in the film.

The theme of the film is a simple one – with Wolverine borrowing a page from the Hulk and trying to control his anger and make peace with his demons so that he doesn’t use his powers for ill. To that end, Kayla is the angel on his shoulder, helping him restrain himself, and his brother Victor is the devil, relishing the killing they do as soldiers and encouraging his brother to give in. All of this supposed thematic exploration is shallow at best, and is lost in a sea of contrived episodes to explain everything from Wolverine’s adamantium claws to his motorcycle jacket, with lots of other pointless X-men cameos thrown in for good measure.

It’s not hard to see why the powers that be did a soft reboot of the X-men universe after this one. Jackman is a star, and occasionally his talents shine through the dreck, but in a franchise that needed a course correction after the misfire of *X3*, *XMO:W* instead gives the audience a bucket-full of poorly crafted cornball action, with a convoluted climax on top. It’s a good thing Wolverine has a healing factor, otherwise I don’t know how the character would have been able to recover from being in such middling crud.