X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Jimmy Logan and Victor Creed are brothers with different fathers.  The brothers were known to bicker as brothers often do.  The boys were born in the 1830s so they could fight in the Civil War.  As you might guess, both are mutants.  They have lethal fingernails and amazing healing powers.  In fact, it looks like these guys could live forever.  So, they fight in all the wars and are so good at it that Colonel Stryker brings them up to the major league of mutants.  After more than a century of wars and slaughter, Jimmy (Wolverine) gets a tinge of integrity and decides to leave the team.  Meanwhile, Stryker is collecting mutants of all kinds and boarding them on Mutant Island, which is apparently a government-sponsored enterprise.  Again, I think that Dick Cheney must have had something to do with this.

Wolverine moves to Canada to be a lumberjack (and he's OK) and he shacks up with the school marm who turns out to be ... (wait for it) ... a mutant!  Although you might think that mutants are fairly rare, they outnumber non-mutants in this movie.  Logan/Wolvy is finally lured to Mutant Island where he is tricked into a very extreme version of water-boarding.  There are some twists and turns and no shortage of mutant battles with rampant death and destruction.  Before you know it, there are mutants running around everywhere.  Wolverine gets an even bigger set of ginsu knives and meets some of his future buddies.  I've gotta think that the guy with laser-eyes was a real handful when he was a toddler.

So now we know how it all started but I am kinda worried about the increasing numbers of mutations in the population, and it seems to run in families.  The special effects are great and the sorta-good guys mostly triumph over the really-bad guys.  Look for a cameo by poker superstar Daniel Negreanu and do not leave the theatre (or pirated dvd) until all of the credits are gone. [JAM - 5/1/2009]