The May 1st release of Wolverine marks the start of the Summer 2009 movie season, and what a textbook kick-off. Because of the tight summer release schedule it may be the only time of the year Hollywood really works hard for your dollar. Last summer’s top ten box office winners which included The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made a combined 2.5 billion dollars. Wolverine begins this year with 87 million and I venture to say it will be another film from Marvel Entertainment to find its way into a list of the year’s top grossing films.

The surprise here for me is that Wolverine is nothing like director Gavin Hood’s Oscar winning 2005 South African film Tsotsi. It has none of those long, lingering shots of emotionless characters, or of a character deep in thought over the moral issues of what criminal decisions he has made and how to repent his sinful ways. The high paced action, clever stunt work and sufficient but not overbearing computer generated work in X-Men Origins: Wolverine so exceeded my preconceived expectations of naïve craftsmanship, especially in light of Bret Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand that I couldn’t help but walk out of the theater in shock that I liked Wolverine as much as I did. Not a great movie, just a fun summer one especially if you’re a Marvel comics fan or have been following the X-Men for decades. Or have just been interested since the 2000 release of the first film. Or just like action films in general. And it’s almost fifteen minutes shy of two hours, which is fantastic. A second longer and the film would lose its edge at least by fifty percent, which should tell you something about how close to substandard this film leans.

But it stays on top for three reasons. One, the writers paint a good image of Jim Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine as a working class guy, a lumberjack, always off to his job chopping down trees and working the forests of the Canadian Rockies. He’s a mutant with the power of a superhero but he chooses to work hard for a living and spend all of his free time with his girlfriend (or is it wife), Kayla played by Lynn Collins. When he uses an axe and a chainsaw to rip down trees instead of his mutant hands, it is a humble choice that gives him a unique human quality and ethical trait of man, not animal. The complete opposite of his brother, Victor, a.k.a. Sabretooth. The fact that Wolverine chooses to be a regular guy denying his powers says much about the equality of life he chooses, which is character of distinction beyond just physical traits. It’s a nice touch in better defining who Wolverine is. He’s not just another Frankenstein monster.

Two, when the action kicks in Gavin Hood uses the arsenal of tools from past action films familiar to the genre—push forward with camera, push forward with actor, slow motion explosions and movement, crane shots, computer generated graphics, choreographed fight scenes, fast editing—but every once in while we see an unusual move or two, usually related to a particular mutant’s skill, that while probably overdone in other films catches us off guard here in well placed camera positions, no doubt with the help of special effects, slowed down, so that something like the swords of Ryan Reynolds, known as Wade, move so incredibly fast that they repel bullets like Obi Wan’s light saber, only they’re samurai swords, slicing a bullet to shreds before it reaches the character’s face. Another dude, Zero, wields guns so quickly that after exhausting his clips he throws his used guns in the air, pulls out new clips and by the time the guns fall they’re falling onto fresh clips and the shooting almost goes non-stop. Quick little moments in the course of action that make you say, “wow.” Which is what good action films are suppose to do.

Three, there are the locations that stretch the film to adventure. The Canadian Rockies, Las Vegas, New Orleans, a circus in Springfield, Illinois, the famous Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, footage shot in New Zealand. And then there are the battlefields of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam, seamlessly blended into one long war. All of these locations take us and Wolverine on a trip, somewhat like a James Bond film, giving the audience a travelogue experience to take home with them. But that somehow the classic elements of earth, water, fire, and air, along with elements wood and metal, are involved in these travels, help unite the senses in a deeper way, for a rich experience and mythical subtext much the same way astrology uses elements, stars and planets to define persona. Or much the same way health spas try to revive the human psyche. Something the average action film might miss.

Sure, in building Wolverine’s character there is the familiarity to Indiana Jones. Like Jones who was a fearless action hero afraid of snakes, so too is Jim Logan who is afraid of flying. Irony used for comedic purposes. And like in Rambo II when Rambo is caught and being tortured, he grabs the bad guy’s microphone and speaks into it telling Marshall Murdock, the guy who left him out to dry, “Murdock, I’m coming get you,” so too does Wolverine tell Colonel William Stryker that he’s going to get him no matter what it takes. Does it feel like League of Extraordinary Gentleman too? Yes. And Spiderman. Learning his blades for the first time, Wolverine is clumsy and awkward, destroying everyday objects because he hasn’t learned to control his new powers. Then, at times, too, it looks like the most current state of the art music video. You may be able to overlook all of this, but maybe that familiarity will just make you feel better, like a good cough medicine. After all, we’re paying to see this because we want it.

Better than the films X2 or The Last Stand for sure, and on par with X-Men (because Wolverine really made that first film), none of these films outside of the first one have really been that memorable. The neat thing here is that like all origin films, the birth and evolution of a character’s impression of self, physically or emotionally, lends itself well to storytelling in the sense there are conflicts and obstacles to overcome, challenges to face and change in a central figure that when all is said and done presents us with a spectacle of accomplishment. That the hero has gone through the worst, has evolved, and in the end arrived a changed man gives the film a sense of fable. Maybe we witnessed something worth repeating, a legend of a man’s journey to overcome adversity, with hands like steel claws.

Not to discredit director Gavin Hood, but I suspect the Executive Producer of Wolverine, Richard Donner, who directed the Lethal Weapon films as well as The Goonies, Superman, The Omen, Scrooged, and Conspiracy Theory may have helped achieve the success of action in this film, which is fine. We all need mentors. And who could ask for a better mentor than Donner (or maybe David Cronenberg, for which there is a small boney element of him here as well).

If I had to give it a rating I’d say two and half stars, or thumbs, or popcorn kernels, or whatever. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, it just means that any stars present here are representative of the most this film has to offer, which is action.

Rated PG-13. 107 minutes. And in the end, always, it’s about the social plight of the mutants.