"The Wolverine" is many thingsanother piece of Marvel's big-screen superhero puzzle, a sturdy vehicle for Hugh Jackman's soulful ferocity, a moderately gripping fish-out-of-water story of self-discovery and redemption. Yet just as important, it's an action film helmed by a director who is, by any reasonable measure, not an action director. Although he's staged solid, classically conceived action in "3:10 to Yuma" and "Copland," he's better known as an actor's director, more at home with the intimacy of "Girl, Interrupted" and "Walk the Line."
Even for a tentpole summer release based on a prized comic-book property, this is not an uncommon phenomenon; on the contrary, it's become standard operating procedure for the studios.
And it's also become the central problem for modern action movies, which have fallen into disarray because of who's now making themand, as a result, how they're being made.
By employing directors with backgrounds in drama, the studios hope action-heavy films will be infused with greater depth. The catch, however, is that drama directors are usually inexperienced at, and thus incapable of, properly handling their material that is the film's main selling point, or one of them.
The outcome isn't pretty: action that gets the point across but lacks coherence, as well as the unique personality that the director was supposedly hired to provide.
