Wolverine

Weapon Excreble

Cork Kneivel film rating: Kneivel wipes out after 2-1/2 school buses.A friend of a friend of a pal of a buddy of a friend of a mate of another guy’s cousin’s barber’s homey had it downloaded onto his laptop in about 10 different 10-minute segments. He plugged it into his big screen to show me, and since he knows I’m a comic book head and a fan of the first 2 X-Men flicks (the 3rd one never happened in my world), probably figured he was giving me something special. Well, he was…and he wasn’t.First off, I’ve never seen an unfinished bootleg version of a film about a month before its release date. I have no idea when this cut was actually downloaded, or what percent of the completed project it would be at, but I was really surprised to see just how much is handled with CGI and the like. Almost every scene had something still unpolished: Wolverine’s claws, the sky, wires on a guy who just did, like, a grllion kick flips through the air, etc. One scene had me chuckling as it was all low-budget 3d computer rendering of a jet screaming through dark sky, just greys and blacks and cylinders and boxes representing the jet and buildings, with a fancified scroll along the bottom reading “Atlanta, Georgia”.The movie though? The movie was…well, it just was. It’s biggest crime is how pedestrian it is. You take arguably the most unique and recognizable comic book character, easily the most popular X-Man, a character of nebulous and ever expanding backstory, and somehow make the thing uninteresting. The credit sequence is the exception here as it takes us from 1845 to the recent past (Vietnam era and after) and shows us how Wolverine and his half-brother (Live Schreiber as Victor aka Sabretooth) are the best they are at what they do. And what they do is fight in United States conflicts abroad. Sabretooth, both in the credits sequence as well as the first ¾ of the movie is the more interesting character here. His fighting style, his animalism, and the dark brooding is used better, as well as being a more recognizable rendering of Wolverine than the conflicted catch-phrasin’ pretty-boy Jackman plays him as.I’m not too up on the Weapon X storyline but you got:the guy who played Sam Adams in the HBO John Adams miniseries. He was also the lead vampire in 30 Days of Night as Colonel StrykerDominic Monaghan (Mery from LOTR/Charlie from LOST) – as a guy who can fiddle with electrical things??? as Agent Zero – a guy who’s very deadly with gunsWill.I.Am as a cowboy teleporter named JohnKevin Durand (the big Canadian guy in everything) as Frederick J. Dukes/The BlobAnd the best piece of casting was Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool – this one I would pay to see and there’s a well done scene with him taking on a room full of gunmen with his bladesGambit and Silver Fox also show up. Gambit for a lame 3-way fight with Logan and Victor. They also have Sabretooth chase down a teenaged Scott Summers. One of the better action sequences and one that will be a “wow” factor when its all finished is a scene with Logan taking on a helicopter carrying Agent Zero. Sorry if I spoiled anything, I don’t think I revealed anything important not easily available anywhere else. I don’t think this film will do too well, partly because I think the super-hero fad is dying out and partly because the film’s just not very good.