4. The Action (Mostly)
Though there's not exactly a lot of it, the film does deliver some scintillating action, especially in its first act, as Wolverine fends off assailants at Yashida's funeral, and then ends up battling several of them both in and atop a train. Both of these sequences in particular remind us of how adept James Mangold is at staging action; we can feel the impact of every hit even in spite of the PG-13 rating, and more to the point, he doesn't indulge in the fashionable shaky cam that ruins so many films like this. The stand-off atop a train, in which Wolverine takes on multiple assailants, is pure comic book action; yes, it's thoroughly ridiculous, but that's sort of the point. Though many critics thought the film was too "dark", this scene's riotous outlandishness proved if nothing else that Mangold wasn't taking himself too seriously. As for the third act's action, that's less great, as mentioned above...