CLAW OF THE BUNGLED.

Byline: ROBERT BENZIKER I FOR THE NEW MEXICAN 

Claw of the bungled 

Robert Benziker I For The New Mexican

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, stabbing and scratching superhero action, rated PG-13, Regal Stadium 14, 424-6296, 1.5 chiles

Back in the 1980s, what attracted so many readers of Marvel Comics' The Uncanny X-Men to the Wolverine character was his ambiguity. Sure, he was cool because he was an ill-tempered, indestructible Canadian switchblade, but what made him compelling was that he had no memories and no name beyond simply "Logan." Who is he? Where is he from? How old is he? How did he get a metal skeleton?

As with the smoke monster in Lost or the Cigarette Smoking Man in The X-Files, the mystery of Wolverine is what kept readers coming back for more. X-Men writer Chris Claremont was savvy

in dropping clues of Logan's past like bread crumbs through the forest but smart enough to know that the trail would never lead to a definitive answer. Alas, not long after Claremont left, Marvel opted to tell the background story, and it was predictably underwhelming. Now, the movie franchise is doing the same thing and achieving the same results.

The film's story begins in 1840 in rural Canada, where young Logan is a sickly child who witnesses the murder of his father. The traumatic experience causes long claws made of bone to grow out of his hands, and he uses them to stab his father's murderer -- only to find out seconds later that the man he killed was actually his real father. In most movies, this scene would sow seeds for a psychologically rich Greek tragedy, but in Wolverine it only lasts a few context-free minutes and is never mentioned again. Yes, this is a movie in which the protagonist murders his father as an irrelevant aside.

We shift to the opening-credits sequence, which features Logan and his half-brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) fighting in every war from the. Civil War to Vietnam. It's very kind of them as Canadians to serve the U.S. Army again and again for more than 100 years, but maybe they just like killing. Or maybe not. After being recruited by William Stryker (Danny Huston) into a special-ops team of mutants, Logan gets tired of the senseless, PG-13 violence he's been a part of and walks away.

Skip ahead once more, and Logan has a cabin in the Canadian Rockies, a steady lumberjack gig, and a woman he loves (Lynn Collins). It doesn't matter how he got any of these things, because they're soon taken from him by Stryker. Creed, who now hates Logan for reasons that are never fully explained, kills Logan's lady friend, setting up one of many scenes in which Hugh Jackman stretches his arms out and yells "Yarrrrrr!" as the camera pulls back into the sky. And the chase for revenge is on.

To defeat Creed, Logan has indestructible metal grafted to his skeleton, and his claws are upgraded from vaguely phallic extensions of bone to sleek knives represented by dubious computer-generated imagery. He also meets many mutants, including the immovable fat man known as The Blob (Kevin Durand); Gambit, a Cajun (Taylor Kitsch) who can channel energy through things like playing cards); and a teleporter named Wraith (Will.i.am).

When Logan is traveling to different locations and meeting these people, the movie is at its best. The various mutants are neat to watch, and the interactions between them generate something that almost resembles fun. Overall, the movie is too grim to really work within a family-friendly rating. Director Gavin Hood crafted the excellent Tsotsi, but his work here is mostly awful. For a very expensive movie, Wolverine often looks cheap. The cast is stocked with actors that I appreciate, such as Jackman, Schreiber, Huston, Dominic Monaghan, and Ryan Reynolds. Unfortunately, Jackman and Schreiber aren't given much to do but sneer, snarl, and utter monosyllabic tough-guy talk.

Usually, the origin story is one of the better parts of a superhero movie. But with Wolverine, we're already familiar with Jackman's rendition of the character through the three X-Men films. It seems pointless to backtrack to show the beginnings of an iconic, mysterious character; did anybody really like it when George Lucas did that with Darth Vader?

It's too bad for poor Wolverine that the bar for superhero movies has been raised in the past year with Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and Watchmen -- all of which are sharply written and directed, star characters who do more than growl, and feature themes beyond feral revenge. Two decades ago, fans would have killed for a Wolverine movie this good. Nowadays, fans should expect better. <