The Wolverine

Saturday brought another cinema trip for the family, and this time it was The Wolverine, the latest in the X-Men franchise. As with Origins: Wolverine, Marvel went back to the well with the only movie character with sufficient chops to convincingly carry a solo movie, and once again it is his immortality that is the centrepiece of the drama.

Summoned from self-imposed exile in rural Canada to say goodbye to Yashida - the good-hearted Japanese prison officer whose life he saved in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, now a billionaire tech mogul with his own ninja clan - Logan is asked to allow the transfer of his healing power to Yashida, saving the old man and rendering him mortal. Then people die, stuff explodes and Wolverine kills a mess of people, all the while agonising about his promise not to hurt anyone else after being forced to eviscerate his beloved Jean Grey in X-Men 3.

The plot that follows is almost - but to the film's credit, not quite - lost in the seeming endless barrage of hyperkinetic ultraviolence. The love interest is almost perfunctory, but after talking to Hannah about it, I wonder if that isn't deliberate. Overall, the film is better and more interesting than either Last Stand or Origins.

Arya-Rose's review: She loved the lid of her mummy's large cola and spent the entire film playing with it.

There is, as ever, a mid-credits stinger setting up the next film, in this case Days of Future Past. It looks interesting, which is more than I've been able to say of any forthcoming X-Men movie in a while.