'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'

Whatever you do, you don't want to make Wolverine mad.
First comes that god-awful earth-shattering scream, then those indestructible adamantium claws pop out of his hands, all leading to a display of what insiders call "berserker rage." Believe me, it's not a pretty picture.
It is, however, a picture we see a lot of in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," the fourth movie to allow Hugh Jackman to play the darkly handsome, intense masculine poster boy for Marvel Comics' favorite band of mutants.
This is not the urbane, debonair Hugh Jackman who hosted the Oscars and did a soft-shoe routine with Beyoncé. This is a man who could say things like "you wanted the animal, you got the animal" like he means them. But does he?
For as fans of the intensely popular X-Men comics and those three previous movies know, Wolverine is one conflicted dude. Yes, he gets mad -- hey, don't we all? -- but then he feels bad about it afterward and worries that trying to cut someone's head off is bad for his karma. How did he get this way anyhow?
Funny you should ask. As its title indicates, "X-Men Origins" concerns itself with Wolverine's back story, with fleshing out the details of stuff that's only hinted at in the other movies. What's the source of that animal kingdom name, where did his disappearing memory go, and what's with those adamantium claws, anyway? Youth wants to know.

As directed by Gavin Hood from a script by David Benioff and Skip Woods, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" answers all those questions and brings everyone up to speed with a brisk thoroughness. 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.

It also helps that both Jackman and costar Liev Schreiber, who plays Wolverine's even angrier half-brother Sabretooth (don't ask), are fine actors who throw themselves into whatever they take on, whether it be Chekhov or comic books.

Taking its origins mandate seriously, "X-Men Origins" starts in Canada's Northwest Territory in 1845, where the boy James, the future Wolverine, finds out that he and Victor, soon to be Sabretooth, are half brothers.

They also discover that they are very tough to kill, which leads to an under-the-opening-credits sequence of the boys fighting in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, even Vietnam.