New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Gavin Hood.
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Liev Schreiber, Dominic Monaghan, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Daniel Henney, Kevin Durand
Description: James Howlett and his best friend Victor Creed abandon mid 19th century Canada to take up arms in the American Civil War, fighting on behalf of the north. Both are blessed with mutant powers and the friends (aka Wolverine and Sabretooth) endure the hell of war unscathed, proving their worth against the Germans in two World Wars before supporting Uncle Sam in Vietnam. This tour of duty leads to a spell in a covert government operation alongside other gifted mutants. Compelled to leave the fold, Wolverine tries to forge a life away from the program but the men in charge refuse to let their prize asset leave without a fight, pitting the hirsute, clawed warrior against his one-time best friend.
Country: US. 2009. 107mins
Sibling rivalry: Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber, left) and his brother Logan (Hugh Jackman) vie for supremacy as their superhero alter-egos Sabretooth and Wolverine in a seemingly endless stream of action sequences
It kicks off like a Victorian period piece. The year is 1854 and a sick young boy gets out of bed to kill a drunken man who has just murdered his father. The boy has sharp bony claws which protrude from his knuckles at will. Is this a horror movie? Will Christopher Lee suddenly appear, glinting menacingly on the horizon?
No. The film turns out to be an invented prequel to Marvel Comics’ X-Men, and Logan, the boy, is a mutant who can apparently recover from any injury, even the fever which has him bedridden. His brother also has very long fingernails and, after the murder, the pair flee from the police and become Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber).
These two finger-licking superhumans join the army and fight in the American Civil War, the two world wars and Vietnam, saving each others’ lives and generally inflicting mayhem on the enemy. But there doesn’t seem to be much love lost between them and it all comes to a head when they’re recruited by nasty Danny Huston (surely a casting contradiction in terms for this amiable actor) to form part of a black ops squad.
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When the squad does some vicious things to Nigerian villagers on the way to beating up a drug lord, Wolverine is disgusted. Sabretooth, meanwhile, goes rogue and decides to kill everyone in sight, including his brother if he can. Which, of course, we know he can’t since we’ve already seen the X-Men follow-up films.
Gavin Hood, the South African director of the excellent Tsotsi, handles all this war stuff with a lot of quickfire editing and then gets down to the real point: an endless stream of fights and special effects finishing up on Three Mile Island, which we discover isn’t a nuclear plant at all but a top-secret government facility for storing captured mutants and converting them to the villain’s side.
You just wonder why Hood waited so long before getting on to the business of amazing our eyes and ears with some ripping entertainment — we could have done without the Victorian episode and the romp through the wars.
Besides the redundant early story, the screenplay is only just adequate and, frankly, neither Wolverine nor Sabretooth are given much in the way of character to bite on. This is a pity for Jackman in particular, an actor who, at his best, is far above this sort of summer season farrago. He has to battle a marauding helicopter and two armoured vehicles as well as jumping about like a handsome but slightly demented battering ram who is seeking revenge on practically the whole world — principally because his girlfriend (Lynn Collins) has come to a sticky end.
You don’t really believe in any of the characters, who also include Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), Weapon X1 (Scott Atkins) and The Blob (an enormously portly Kevin Durand). Perhaps the suspension of disbelief is what such films require and even bargain for. So if you like this sort of thing it is mercifully under two hours long and fast-paced enough to make you forget the credit crunch for a bit.
For the rest of us, it’s sound and fury signifying virtually nothing, expensively mounted, crashingly noisy but hardly a big-budget must-see. The new Star Trek, coming out here next week, would seem to have an easy ride beside it.
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I spotted a goof in the film last night. Sabretooth got shot by a powerful energy beam. His clothes should have been burnt away but they were hardly singed. His flesh healed really quickly, like it always does. That's his special ability.
The trouble with prequels is that they are always setting things up for the films that follow, so they are constrained in what they can do.
- John, London
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