Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber
Directed by: Gavin Hood
Genre: Science-fiction/Fantasy
Running Time: 107 minutes

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is about a pair of brothers, Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Liev Schreiber) who find out about their powers, fight in countless (boring) wars and eventually join U.S Colonel Stryker's little army of mutants. Soon, Stryker asks them to do things they didn't agree to in the beginning, thus causing Logan to leave the group for a normal life (as a logger of all things, oh this is porno material I'm telling you).

He falls in love with a teacher (how predictable, fall in love with the poor frail woman with the boring job why don't you) and all is happy for a while. Then Stryker comes to warn him about Victor (who happens to be Sabretooth by the way), who seems to have become murderous over something I'm not quite sure of (trust and pride or something else chauvinistic like that), killing the mutants previously in Stryker's little group one by one. And thus the madness begins.

Mostly I had little to no expectations of this movie which is probably why it seemed better to me than it really should be. I'm not a fanboy of such franchises and never will be (the whole 'need to be as accurate to the book/story as possible' affair makes movie watching way too tiring for me), which I think is why the movie worked for me.

However it does feel a little too rushed, even for the very clueless me, with the storyline as bare as Hugh Jackman in a few scenes (and a hot few scenes they were!).

So for someone who doesn't know anything about Wolverine at all, the movie feels like two brothers who fought and decided to screw a lot of other people over while they're at it (whatever happened to good old "whipping it out and measuring"?). In other words, just don't bother thinking too much about the storyline. Watch the cool fights and effects and that will make your movie.

Or you could be a total girl (or gay) and just ogle the really handsome Hugh Jackman throughout the movie. That will work too.

Verdict: X-Men Origins: Wolverine is made watchable by its strong arsenal of sparkly visual effects candy (and eye candy too). If you're in it for anything else, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Worth watching for: Awesome fight scenes (my favorite had to be Daniel Henney's gun scene and Ryan Reynolds' sword vs spraying bullets scene) and Hugh Jackman running around naked. Yes, NAKED. Again.