There's a reason Marvel conceived the X-Men as a team: The menagerie of mutants are more interesting when they come in a pack.
When the posse of super-powered outcasts was first brought to the screen by Bryan Singer in 2000, Hugh Jackman's mutton-chopped, adamantium-clawed Wolverine emerged as the stand-out super-freak. And Hollywood accounting being what it is, he was naturally granted his own solo encore in 2009's underwhelming X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a silly spin-off that never quite came together.
Now, to wipe the slate clean, Jackman and director James Mangold (Knight and Day; Girl, Interrupted) have teamed up to bring out the claws once again in The Wolverine. And while it's definitely a more entertaining and far deeper film than the last Wolverine outing, it still falls short of the top tier of Marvel tentpoles like the fizzy Iron Man and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.
