“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” leaps off the screen, talons shiny and sharpened, fomenting a blast of excitement to the summer movie season.

This is a picture to be seen on the big screen. What the creative stew came up with is a fast-moving adventure that opens with Jackman and Schreiber as line soldiers in the Civil War, in the trenches of World War I, landing in Normandy during World War II, and trudging through the jungles of Vietnam. They get hit by bullets, pummeled and stabbed. Nothing stops them. It's jaw-dropping.

Both are recruited by the underhanded Col. William Stryker (Danny Huston – his late, famous cinematic dad, John Huston, would've been proud of the nasty portrayal), gathering up his ragtag battalion of mutants to take on the globe.

“I know how special you are,” he tells Jackman and Schreiber. “I'm putting together a special team with special privileges.”
Schreiber's Sabretooth turns into a killing machine, despite brother Jackman's attempts to guide him another way.

Meanwhile, six years earlier, in the Canadian Rockies, Jackman was living contented as a lumberjack with Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins), the love of his life, in an isolated, mountaintop house when Stryker showed up.

“Someone is hunting down our old team,” he says. “Your country needs you.” Snaps Jackman's Wolverine, “I'm Canadian.”

Kayla wonders why they want him back. Says he, “I'm the best at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice.”

The movie glides with deft dialogue and extraordinary special effects, including one set piece in which a helicopter hovers over Jackman speeding on a motorcycle. The clash, the crash, the calamity is mighty.

Jackman is a huge screen presence. He has a way with a line and a grace that served him well hosting this year's Oscars. Here, he plays a man with “berserker rage” who's afraid of flying.