If you’re not one of the estimated 100,000 people who illegally downloaded the rough-cut of ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine,’ you definitely missed out and should run ‘- don’t walk ‘- to the nearest theater.

But for all the law-abiding movie-goers, X-Men is a must see.

Wolverine, obviously one of the most popular X-Men characters and just plain one of the coolest ideas ever, finally has a film all to himself. The movie takes on the journey of how Wolverine came to be and why he always was the gruff, cool mutant with no memory and no one wanted to mess with.

I’ve never been a fan of prequels or, for that matter, sequels. Studios just never do the originals justice, but for a fourth installment of the X-Men dynasty, it was pretty awesome.
The film starts off 150 years in the past with Logan, also known as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), as a child. He ends up killing his birth father and runs away with his half-brother Victor, also known as Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber). Over the course of a century the two fight side by side in every war, until the 1970s when they are recruited by Col. Stryker to serve in a special mutant unit. After a while, Logan doesn’t like what the unit has become, so he walks out on them and turns his back on Victor. Moving ahead, Logan becomes a happy Canadian lumberjack with a beautiful girlfriend whom he loves ‘- until Victor takes it all away from him. Out for revenge, Logan allows Stryker to experiment on him so he could be strong enough to kill Victor. By doing this he becomes Wolverine.

I won’t spoil the rest ‘- you’ll just have to see it.

The CGI effects are, of course, top-notch and a couple of big-action set pieces are visually impressive, including a motorcycle and helicopter chase that I wouldn’t want on my block.
The film provided great ways to introduce the future X-Men like Cyclopes, and while I loved Professor Xavier’s spot, I would have liked more interaction with Gambit played by Dominic Monaghan.

Jackman and Schreiber had great chemistry as brothers and their three fight scenes are extremely well-planned and executed. You can really see intense emotion between them. The bad points in the film would have to be that it took maybe too serious a tone. It’s almost like it was missing a piece of humanity that the other three X-Men films portrayed so well. If not for Logan’s love interest it would almost lack emotion all together, but what do you expect from the producers/director that gave us all four Lethal Weapon movies.
The best scene in the movie was when Logan and Stryker were in the lab. Stryker promises to make a revenge-seeking Wolverine indestructible, but his double-crossing antics only serve to unleash severe rage, inspiring a mutant fury unbeknownst to everyone.
One final note: Make sure you sit through the credits, it’s worth it. This film is a must for everyone who loves Stan Lee and X-Men.
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