X-Men Origins: Wolverine

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Fortunately, Jackman is well-matched with Schreiber, who can sneer with the best of them and wears fangs well. The two have three spectacular battles together before squaring off against a formidable enemy atop a nuclear reactor.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Although it's a quintessential popcorn movie, Wolverine is not mindless. Hood and Jackman bring depth to a comic-book tale of anti-heroes with anger issues.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Hugh Jackman demonstrates that you can segue effortlessly from a tuxedoed song-and-dance man at the Oscars to a feral gent with adamantium claws and "berserker rage."

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Jackman has a wily, crowd-pleasing knack for playing Wolverine as if he were a more emotive and even more snarly Clint Eastwood.

Premiere Jordan Burchette

Things explode, jerks get stabbed and all the boxes on the action-movie honey-do list get checks.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

When it comes to superhero tales, the two least appealing types are origin stories and prequels. Wolverine has the double disadvantage of being both.

Charlotte Observer Rick Bentley

Ends up being a relatively sharp way to start the summer movie season. The familiarity of the story just declaws it a bit.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Whether this journey to the past was necessary is definitely up for debate: Wolverine's history turns out to be only moderately interesting and not terribly surprising.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It's a solid, efficient comic book movie that is content to provide comic book satisfactions of the action and violence variety. If it doesn't rise to the heights of Christopher Nolan's "Batman" films, it doesn't stray into "Daredevil" territory either.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The effect-laden showdowns feel more dutiful than daring, and the rare moments of fun are parceled out frugally, like precious nuggets of adamantium.

Variety Justin Chang

Noisy and impersonal, X-Men Origins: Wolverine bears all the marks of a work for hire, conceived and executed with a big budget but little imagination.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is Hugh Jackman's misfortune that when they were handing out superheroes, he got Wolverine, who is for my money low on the charisma list. He never says anything witty, insightful or very intelligent; his utterances are limited to the vocalization of primitive forces: anger, hurt, vengeance, love, hate, determination.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A chaotic headbanger, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is saved from pure flat-footed blockbuster franchise adequacy by six things, three of them on Hugh Jackman's left hand, three on his right.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Wolverine feels enslaved to its many masters - Marvel Comics, Hollywood, and the young men who devour their products - never sidestepping the déjà vu it inspires.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

There's little of the seen-it-all, wise-guy acerbity that made his character in the X-Men trilogy stand apart from his fellow mutants. Here, he just glowers.

Time Richard Corliss

O.K., not great.

Washington Post John Anderson

Wolverine is full of angst, and yet it has virtually all the humanity wrung out of it in an effort to create a live-action cartoon.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It is the latest evidence that the superhero movie is suffering from serious imaginative fatigue.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's all a jumble and, worse, a damned impersonal one.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Unfortunately, the talented cast is saddled with some mercilessly flat dialogue, a definite point of vulnerability for any mutant movie.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Simultaneously overstuffed and undernourished and just plain sloppy.

TV Guide Jason Buchanan

From a non-fanboy perspective, it has some exciting action and colorful characters; unfortunately, the special effects vary from impressive to embarrassing.

NPR Bob Mondello

The most terrifying thing about the movie, really, is that plural: Originsssss. So many mutants, so much time. Thank God we can leave that for another summer.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Jackman's committed performance keeps the movie on track, though Huston and Schreiber are strictly on autopilot.

The New Yorker David Denby

In the noisy X-Men Origins: Wolverine, two warring mutant brothers, Liev Schreiber, a morose sadist with fangs, and Hugh Jackman, unhappy but ripped, fly at each other again and again, grappling, punching, slashing. Alas, there’s nothing quite memorable here: much of the combat is just a whirl of movement photographed up close.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Even the final fight, between the united brothers and the end result of Stryker's amusing attempts to combine teleportation, accelerated healing, adamantium, and optic blasts into a super mutant, is as ridiculous and half-assed as the rest of the movie.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Wolverine purports to tell us more and yet gives us less: It's so cluttered and action-packed that the action ceases to mean anything -- virtually nothing the characters do or say results in consequences that stick.

Slate Dana Stevens

Remarkably lame.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Everything gets scarified on the altar of speed. You hardly get any chance to take the measure of any mutant, least of all Wolverine.

Empire Nick De Semlyen

Can everyone stop making moody origin stories now, please? While not a disaster, this isn't the claws-out, rampaging adventure we hoped for. No-one cares where Wolverine found his jacket -- a spin-off with him kicking ass in Japan would have been way more fun.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Altogether unfathomable, if not unbearable.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Wolverine is a noisy mess, an origin/prequel that's nicely full of Jackman's ace glare as Wolverine and seriously killer snarl – The Boy From Aaarrrgh! – but utterly devoid of any of the borderline subversive smarts that made Bryan Singer's "X-Men" outings so contemporarily resonant.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Supposedly a comic book movie, and yet it violates one of the tenets of comic books: It doesn't delineate and particularize Wolverine's special powers.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story’s mounting ludicrousness--two words: adamantium bullets--or a conclusion that’s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Slice-and-dice superhero fiasco.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

My brain glazed over and my heart turned adamantine while the stupidities of this action thriller played themselves out.