Review – Logan
‘An old man dies, a little girl lives. Fair trade.’
Hugh Jackman graces us as Wolverine for the final time in Logan, James Mangold’s epic, violent, emotional finale that sends the legendary superhero off in a blaze of blood and glory.
Logan, inspired by the Old Man Logan comic series, takes place in 2029, where mutants are few and far between, as Logan/Wolverine (Jackman), now limping, scarred, grayed, and disheveled, is taking care of an ailing Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) while moonlighting as a limo driver at night. He comes in contact with Laura (Dafne King), a young girl who has powers of her own and is wanted by a government agency. Logan then takes Professor X and Laura on the road in an attempt to get to North Dakota to a place called Eden, a safe zone for the remaining mutants.
The movie is a comic book Western, and plays out as one a classic “final job” movies. Logan is on the tail-end of his life and sees his final mission is to get Laura to the safe zone, even though he would rather spend the rest of his days alone. Through out their mission, we see how beaten Logan is and how vulnerable he has become. We watch as the once unstoppable force is now a broken down machine and nearly mortal. However, Logan still does everything in his power, no matter how much it hurts him, to try and get Laura to Eden. And without spoiling anything, there is a beautiful irony in why Logan has become so weak. His greatest strength and the thing that has saved him more times than anyone can count is what ultimately leads to his downfall.
Logan is easily the best film in the Wolverine trilogy, but that isn’t saying much, seeing as X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) is one of the worst comic book movies I have ever seen, and The Wolverine (2013) is only decent. This isn’t a perfect comic book movie and nowhere near as transcendent as Fox’s last foray into the R-rated comic book genre, Deadpool (2016). There a couple places it suffers and some of it isn’t even the movies fault, but its predecessors.
The film itself has pacing issues. The first bit and the last half hour are perfect and filled with breathtaking action and a ton of emotion, particularly the final battle, which is relentless and ends on the most emotional scene in any X-Men film. But the middle 45 minutes to an hour is spotty and drags a bit. A few scenes could have been cut and I found myself looking at my watch more times that I’d like.
The opening scene of the film also didn’t sit right with me. Being the first R-rated Wolverine movie, we knew we were going to get a lot more violence and a lot more graphic language from Wolverine than ever before, and that idea is cool. However, the first scene, which is filled with limbs being cut and a ton of course language, felt forced. I get that it was setting the tone of, “this is what you’re in for,” but it just didn’t flow as well as I hoped.
I think my biggest problem with Logan isn’t really the movies fault. Because the continuity of all the X-Men movies is so jumbled and chaotic, this movie feels incredibly random and there are events and characters and aspects of this world that aren’t fully realized needed more fleshing out. I think one more movie before this story, to show us the beginning stages of Logan’s deterioration, both mentally and physically, and showing more of the extinction of humans, would have helped greatly.
That being said, this movie is still very good. The R-rated action is as bloody and violent as you can imagine. Some of it is rather grotesque and graphic and even made me wince a couple times. There is a ton of emotion in this movie and a lot of heart, which is something that had been missing from the X-Men movies of the past. I also loved the performances from Patrick Stewart, who I can see getting some awards love towards the end of the year, and Dafne King gives an insane, mostly word-less performance that could be the breakout of 2017.
But the real reason why this movie works and the reason why the X-Men movies are what they are is Hugh Jackman. Jackman shows us a new side of Logan we have never seen before. He gives an arresting, powerful performance that shows Logan at his absolute lowest and his most insane, truly buying into this ‘Wounded Warrior’ characters. Wolverine has never kicked so much ass and you can tell that Jackman went all out for his final hora.
It could be argued that Jackman is the most important actor in comic book movie history. Nobody will ever be as prolific and as iconic as Jackman was as Logan/Wolverine, and Logan ends with a perfect send off to this cinematic and comic book legend.
MY RATING – 3/4
Did you see Logan? What did you think? Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.