Hardcore comic book fans and casual moviegoers alike need to know one thing about The Wolverine right from the outset: the film is a hell of a lot better than the cinematic travesty that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

That 2009 release – which told the story of how Logan (Hugh Jackman) lost his memory and gained an adamantium-laced skeleton (complete with six bitchin’ razor-sharp claws) – is renowned for being the nadir of the X-Men franchise, rivaled only by Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Unlike either of those films, The Wolverine manages to tell a cohesive, mostly satisfying tale that sees its lead character confront his emotional demons and emerge a more fully realized, better-developed and more beloved character because of it. In short, something Ratner could only dream of achieving onscreen.

The Wolverine picks up a few years after the events of The Last Stand (not the Arnold one, of course…), and our hero is understandably still stricken with the dangerous combination of grief and guilt after having to (spoiler alert!) kill his beloved Jean Grey a.k.a. the Phoenix (Famke Janssen), who was – as you might recall – amid a murderous rampage at the time. Now Logan wanders the Canadian wilderness lost in his immortal existence, begging for a death that will never come. Even with the virtually limitless ability to heal, some people are just never satisfied.

From his self-pitying spiral of despair, Logan is plucked by Yukio (Rila Fukushima) and brought to Japan, where an old acquaintance offers to spare Logan his eternal pain and make him mortal. Of course, the plot becomes far more complicated than this simple meeting, but the fun of The Wolverine is in the discovery of the grander adventure that Logan gets caught up in. Hint: Romance! Intrigue! Samurai!

Director James Mangold (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma) makes good use of the film’s exotic setting, and numerous elements of Japanese culture and history (including the WWII bombing of Nagasaki) find their way into the plot at hand. In many ways, The Wolverine hues closely to the tone of The Dark Knight in that it is as much a crime drama as it is a superhero action film. However, action fans won’t be disappointed. The Wolverine definitely delivers on that front as well and features the most intense, most violent look at the character thus far. It’s no surprise then that rumors indicate that an R-rated cut may hit home video at some point. An intense, funeral-set battle and an action sequence atop a bullet train are among the film’s highlights.

That being said, The Wolverine is not without its flaws as well, and fans will be a bit disheartened to hear that a few of its problems are carried over from Logan’s initial solo adventure. As written by Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard) and Scott Frank (Minority Report), the film again features a few drawn-out and disappointing moments – Janssen’s extended cameo grows a bit tedious after a while – and its plot does get a bit too unnecessarily convoluted in Act 2, causing its climax to become slightly muddled. An earlier version of the script by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) featured Wolverine as the sole mutant, and the finished film ends up shoehorning in a couple more mutants who end up serving little purpose to the overall plot, especially the villainous Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).

All that aside, The Wolverine is – at its heart – a character study of one of Marvel’s most popular heroes and largely honors the comic book arc it’s based on. It also delves deeper into the psychology of its protagonist than Iron Man 3 and is a far more fun time at the movies than the entertaining but somber Man of Steel. Jackman once again infuses Wolverine with just the right amount of heart and ferocity, delivering his best performance as the character yet.

The Wolverine had one basic mission: to improve on the problems weighing down the previous Wolverine film and bridge the timeline gap between The Last Stand and next summer’s time travel epic X-Men: Days of Future Past. It succeeds on both counts, ranking as one of the better X-films to date and a must-see for audiences this summer. Just don’t forget to stay for the game-changing mid-credits scene.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5