The Wolverine
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: July 26, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 46 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
19
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJul 26, 2013
A refreshing summer cocktail of action-movie staples, The Wolverine combines the bracingly adult flavor of everyone’s favorite mutant antihero — tortured, boozy X-Man Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine — with the fizzy effervescence of several mixers from the cabinet of Japanese genre cinema: noirish yakuza crime drama, samurai derring-do and ninja acrobatics. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJul 25, 2013
The movie's a solid fish-out-of-water thriller that just happens to be populated by a few folks with adamantium skeletons or poison saliva on their résumés. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJul 24, 2013
If comic book movies are the last place you look for a soulful, serious performance, The Wolverine should be your first. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 25, 2013
Taken on its own terms The Wolverine is the cleanest, least pretentious and most satisfying superhero movie of the summer. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeJul 23, 2013
The Wolverine boasts one of the best pulp-inspired scripts yet. It’s still full of corny dialogue...but there’s a genuine elegance to the way it establishes Logan’s tortured condition and slowly brings the character around to recovering his heroic potential, methodically setting up and paying off ideas as it unfolds. Read full review
75
The Film StageNathan BartlebaughFeb 17, 2017
As a consolidated character piece threaded with a popcorn-munching action picture, The Wolverine is solid. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJul 28, 2013
The post-conversion 3D is more distracting than anything else, but the rest of this surprisingly fun entertainment is as sharp as the hero’s claws. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJul 26, 2013
Mangold front-loads the action, but near the end there’s a first-rate fight atop a bullet train between Wolverine/Logan and some especially pesky ninjas. It puts the train fights in the recent “The Lone Ranger” to shame. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireJul 26, 2013
It has such a strong aesthetic about it, it's almost as if The Wolverine functions as its own stand-alone film, rather than as a piece of the "X-Men" mythology. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Geoff PevereJul 26, 2013
Whether or not this flies in the unforgiving fan world remains to be seen. But for those less intemperately invested, The Wolverine will come as a welcome and bracing surprise: An almost human-scaled superhero movie about a guy who goes to die in Japan and ends up beating his way back to life. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJul 26, 2013
The Wolverine is one of the better comic-book movies of 2013, thanks in large part to an electric performance by Hugh Jackman. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 25, 2013
The Wolverine shows that, while originality would be nice, a little novelty and enthusiasm in the presentation of the familiar can be quite enough. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJul 25, 2013
Apart from Khodchenkova, who displays the acting acumen of a runway model and gives new meaning to the term Russian mole (she's the villainous vixen of the tale, suited up in high heels and slinky, scaly couture), the cast of The Wolverine is uniformly good. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJul 25, 2013
Finally - a superhero movie that doesn't feel like every other superhero movie. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJul 25, 2013
It's simply a more focused scenario than usual, full of violence done up with a little more coherence and visceral impact than usual. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTom RussoJul 25, 2013
Jackman spends enough time compellingly playing stranger in a strange land that you’ll put up with a few unwanted doses of the old familiar. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Jul 24, 2013
Now here’s a comic-book movie. In a summer that’s delivered one overstuffed Phase Two sequel and a bloated reboot designed to establish a whole new universe of interconnected franchises, The Wolverine has a self-contained efficiency that’s hard to resist. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineScott WoldApr 3, 2018
As much as director James Mangold’s cinematic interpretation had going for it prior to pre-production, it’s a pity it only seldom succeeds—largely due to the decisions made way back before Darren Aronofsky was attached to helm. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJul 25, 2013
A modest superhero picture may sound like a contradiction in terms, but really it is a welcome respite. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissJul 25, 2013
Let all Marvel franchises have as long a life as Logan. But could Singer let Jackman sing a few numbers as the knife-fingered mutant? They could call it Les Scissorables. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJul 24, 2013
You have to hand it to Marvel for managing to leave audiences breathless in anticipation of a sequel after making them sit through two-plus hours of merely satisfactory storytelling. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigJul 28, 2013
An intermittently exciting action film anchored by a strong performance by Jackman, who embodies Wolverine like no one else could. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle SmithJul 25, 2013
I liked that The Wolverine (which saves a nifty twist for a surprise scene in the middle of the end credits) turns down the volume on the usual din of colliding mutant superpowers. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 25, 2013
This pissed-off man of Adamantium claws is stalking new ground (Japan), and his fight with yakuza on top of Tokyo's speeding bullet train is a wowser. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundJul 24, 2013
This may be the year's best superhero movie because, for a sufficient amount of time, it doesn't feel like a superhero movie at all. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreJul 23, 2013
This Wolverine gets our hopes up, and falls short. Read full review
60
CineVueAmon WarmannFeb 17, 2017
Unsurprisingly, Jackman is as perfect for Wolverine as he was when he first played the character 13 years ago. Convincing whether going berserk on a troublesome ninja or showing Logan's inner turmoil, he's a commanding presence throughout and, as you might expect, is the film's engine. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJul 26, 2013
It exists in fits and starts: a Blade Runner–esque moment of rainy contemplation on a hotel balcony; some weird sexual tension with a lizard girl (statuesque Svetlana Khodchenkova) who steals away Wolverine’s healing powers. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJul 25, 2013
The Wolverine is an erratic affair, more lumbering than compelling, an ambitious film with its share of effective moments that stubbornly refuses to catch fire. Read full review
60
The DissolveTasha RobinsonJul 25, 2013
The lack of plot coherence is a lingering irritant in a film that otherwise seems to be trying to improve on its cinematic-series forebears. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJul 25, 2013
The filmmakers work at creating a new take on an old protagonist and then don’t really have much new to do with him once they’ve achieved that. It’s a good effort. Just not an entirely successful one. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterMegan LehmannJul 21, 2013
Until a third act that collapses in a harebrained heap, the director largely succeeds in keeping the more cartoonish aspects at bay, roughing up the surface with organically staged fight scenes and, crucially, raising the stakes by stripping his hitherto indestructible hero of his self-healing powers. Read full review
60
EmpireChris Hewitt (1)Jul 18, 2013
An improvement on the last outing for Jackman’s not-so-merry mutant. If only it trusted enough in its unique setting to forgo a descent into aggressively awful formula. Read full review
60
Total FilmNeil SmithJul 18, 2013
It’s a step up from the garbled silliness of Wolverine’s first solo outing. Unlike Origins, the storytelling is more sharply focused here, ignited by flashes of stylised superheroism. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 28, 2013
Slapped with the generic title The Wolverine, the fifth feature-length appearance of Hugh Jackman’s X-Man John Logan is basically "The Bad News Wolverine Goes to Japan" and is not especially world-shaking. Read full review
50
NPRIan BuckwalterJul 26, 2013
I'd like to credit Mangold, along with writers Christopher McQuarrie, Mark Bomback and Scott Frank for their good intentions; the smaller scope and lighter tone of their film is a tonic after bloated doom and gloom of "Man of Steel." Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJul 25, 2013
The mediocre mushy stuff isn’t alleviated by enough action. Read full review
50
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekJul 25, 2013
The Wolverine—despite being an improvement on Gavin Hood’s muddled 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine—isn’t worthy of Jackman’s gifts. It’s a reasonably engaging summer diversion, a semi-rousing adventure that doesn’t make you feel robbed of two hours of your life. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJul 24, 2013
This is Jackman’s show entirely, and he’s as forceful and charismatic as ever as the walking, talking hurt that is Wolverine. If only he had something more interesting to do here. Read full review
42
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJul 25, 2013
It’s rare that a movie stops making sense before anyone speaks a line of intelligible dialogue, but The Wolverine is a rare movie. Read full review
42
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 24, 2013
The Wolverine wants to have it both ways: a dark character story and an action-packed superhero film. But it never reconciles the two notes, and thus becomes more and more atonal as it wobbles towards its symphonically jarring ending. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 24, 2013
Good thing the Aussie star has the role down to a science, since the rest of The Wolverine is a howler. Read full review
40
Time Out LondonGuy LodgeJul 23, 2013
This turgid return papers over the previous film’s narrative, but creates little in the way of a fresh character arc. Read full review
40
The GuardianHenry BarnesJul 18, 2013
The flat hammerblows of The Wolverine bear little relation to the zing and pop of Matthew Vaughn's colourful treatment. Inconsistency is inevitable in a world that's constantly being dug up and done over, but it leaves us no time to fall in love with anything being flung at us. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJul 18, 2013
The previous X-Men film, First Class, was secure enough in its own skin to embrace its comic side. Mangold’s picture affects a pubescent snarl instead: that’s the difference between comic and daft. Read full review
31
Film.comLaremy LegelJul 24, 2013
The Wolverine reveals itself to be a film in desperate need of a point, in dire need of consequences and in a wandering search of any semblance of emotional weight. Read full review
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