Directed by Gavin Hood
Rated PG-13
(Two Stars)

If you’ve ever wondered where Logan, easily the most photogenic member of the X-Men team, got those shiny blades that come out of his knuckles then “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is must-see entertainment.

X-men follows a well-worn path of super-hero franchises that try to regain some of their old spark by taking us back to where it all began. For Logan (Hugh Jackman) it’s a story of hard times. The death of his father puts Logan on run with his brother, Victor (Liev Schreibner), an unhealthy blend of prodigious fingernails and anger issues.

The two eventually come to the attention of the U.S. government and wind up as mercenaries in a band of super-human mutants. For Victor life as a paid killer is a cozy fit, but Logan wants none of it. He packs in his superpowers and a government paycheck in favor of a quiet life as a lumberjack with his beautiful girlfriend, Kayla (Lynn Collins).

So, here’s a question: why do action films treat girlfriends the way the Nature Channel treats cute little bunnies? You just can’t relax when they’re around because you know that something bad is going to happen, and soon. Sure enough Victor shows up and Logan’s hiatus from CG action scenes comes to an unhappy end.

Logan takes off after Victor, but makes a detour into the lab of an unscrupulous government operative, William Stryker (Danny Huston), who was his commander back when he and Victor were doing covert ops. Stryker has been trying to build a super-mutant and offers to tune Logan up into Wolverine 2.0.

Logan’s alliance with Stryker is short lived, but it does yield some satisfying results. Logan’s boney claws are transformed in those razor sharp metal blades that are his signature and we are treated to the satisfying sight of a helicopter being turned into confetti. X-Men fans are there for the action and from here on in the action is in abundant supply.

Most super-hero films try to stay true to their comic-book roots, but “X-Men Origins” does them one better, it holds on to its comic-book rhythms. Comic book storyboarding is a poseur’s art form. The hard work of building action out of static illustrations is achieved by creating a series of melodramatic stills.

Their young readers fill in the blanks with their imaginations. More over, dialogue delivered in balloons had better be short and pithy so as not to crowd out the artwork.

Director Gavin Hood doesn’t waste much time with narrative flow. X-Men Origins is a staccato montage of action-genre images: POW, Logan get thrown through a wall; ZAP, Victor suddenly appears in his metro-killer trench coat; BAM, and entire nuclear cooling tower disintegrates. And the dialogue follows suite: short-bursts of machismo that are so predictable you’ll find yourself finishing Logan’s sentences. If you’re looking for nuance, boy have you come to the wrong place.

But X-Men Origins does have its pleasures. The destruction of the cooling tower is ingeniously conceived and rendered. Believe me, you’ll never look at Three Mile Island the same way again. And Schreibner does make for a deliciously wicked Victor. You believe this guy and come to share Logan’s hunger for his demise.

In fact, casting is one of the film’s strengths. Danny Huston is a talented actor and he brings a certain, indefinable smarminess to William Stryker that adds some real juice to the proceedings. He fills out the few lulls between action scenes and as such is a welcome relief. Taylor Kitsch, best known as Tim Riggins in TV’s “Friday Night Lights,” does a pretty satisfying turn as Remy LeBeau, a New Orleans gambler who comes to Logan’s aid.

Lynn Collins isn’t given much to do with her role except keep us guessing how long she’ll last. But she is a beautiful presence, and, in a film that is hyper-focused on its art direction, that’s not a bad thing.

In the end, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” suffers from a fate common to prequels. It’s not so much a story in itself as an overlong a setup for things to come.