Logan (Film Review)

The Last Of Us

Logan is an R-Rated (15) superhero film directed by James Mangold (also directed The Wolverine), featuring what's said to be the last performances of Hugh Jackman & Patrick Stewart as Logan/Wolverine & Charles Xavier/ Professor X as part of the universe in the X-Men film series. It follows an older, broken Wolverine in the year 2029, who has been caring for a senile Charles Xavier due to his telepathic powers coming unstable & most mutants in the world appear to be gone. Once they come across Laura, a young mutant whose in danger, Logan & Charles take their weary selves on one final adventure in getting this girl to safety. When asking some people in the last few months if they were going to see Logan, a surprising amount expressed they're beginning to get tired of the family-friendly superhero film formula, that it's starting to feel too generic & safe. Simultaneously being what feels like a heartfelt farewell to Hugh Jackman's 17 year run as Wolverine, Logan feels less like a superhero film & more like a drama. Whilst it may not be for everybody, anyone whose known this character even slightly will revel in his final chapter. This film is brutal in all of the right ways, being a deservingly gritty stage for Wolverine's character & the harsh, emotional ride that comes with it.
 


An older, rundown Wolverine with strong beard game

Two things really stick out when thinking back on Logan: performances & it's R-Rating. The rating is what you'll notice first the second you'll see limbs flying off & that's when you know you're set in for a story that doesn't hold back. Upon the first few bloody-covered stabbings & decapitations, I turned to my friend next to me, smiling as if I'd just been handed a free beer. Logan does a great job in setting you up by making it very clear from the get-go this isn't for children. You should not go into this film expecting a standard overcoming the odds-exhilarating superhero action tone. It's like the opposite of X-Men Apocalypse, which was mostly about flashy, comic book-ish fun sequences with a cartoon villain & massive lack of substance. It's tone is a refreshing mixture of dark & grounded in a scope that feels small-scale. It's antagonist, Robot-Hand Villain Man (as I call him), played by Boyd Holbrook, isn't a larger than life villain which is exactly what this type of story needs. It concentrates the themes of dystopia & hopelessness that create a perfect canvas for the bloody, chaotic & savage violence.
 


This is the best & most down to earth chemistry Stewart & Jackman have had together

Aside from watching baddies bloodily take metal claws to the face, the film equally doesn't hold back on the complexity Jackman's Wolverine. He's just tired. Not just of himself but of the world. Drinking himself both through his emotional & age-weary physical pain, he doesn't care anymore. Those who've seen 2013's The Wolverine, the previous film in the Wolverine trilogy also directed by James Mangold, you may draw a comparison between the character's exhaustion of the world between then & now. You'll find that in Logan, an appropriate word to describe Wolverine is that he's so much more deteriorated. Not just because he's not healing as fast he used to (hence his ageing) but because of all of what he's seen. Hugh Jackman flawlessly takes that spectrum of wanting to depressingly down a bottle of whiskey in one sitting & suddenly want to stab someone in the neck to the R-Rated level. He's able to show how Logan is bearing such pain but walling it off with a stubborn front. This is a Wolverine that's brutal, fatigued, scarred & gritty & we love him.
 

Dafne Keen as Laura. "That's it, sweetie. Bitch-face for the camera!"

Patrick Stewart was actually the biggest surprise. The trailers for this film showcased Wolverine's weathered, beaten & torn down state, which already prepared us for that character's side of things. Even though those trailers only showed a couple of shots of Stewart's Xavier, I wasn't expecting to see how low he had fallen on the same levels as Wolverine. He rambles, forgets who Logan is or can at times barely recollect what's happened up until now. He's become so frail, so mentally & physically weak, it breaks your heart. Yet, Patrick Stewart still manages to tug on your soul by encapsulating Charles' sweetness that's been at the core of this character for so many years. It's a key reason why Logan is more like a dark drama instead of a superhero film: it's set in a world where superheroes once thrived but they are still people & all people are vulnerable to aging, pain & tragedy. Also, witnessing Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier utter the words "Fuck off, Logan" to Wolverine is one of the best lines in the entire series.
 

That face alone makes me want to cry

If you want to talk about negatives, there were a few. As said before, I don't think of this really as a proper superhero film, even an X-Men film but it still exists in that universe. It's set along the same timeline that Days of Future Past left off. Logan feels focused on the present & moving the story forward instead of filling in more of the blanks of what happened in the years before this point. There's a vague hint or two but I feel that I could have connected even more with the characters & the story if I had some extra detail of what got them to such a state of rock bottom. That brings me to a main point that can either be taken as a pro or con: Logan does stand on it's own but it's emotional weight holds the more familiar you are with the characters & the world he comes from. If this is the first X-Men/Wolverine film you've seen, you'll still connect with the character that is Wolverine, maybe wanting to watch other films to enjoy learning more about his journey up to Logan. However, if you're not normally a superhero film fan & have no interest in going back to other franchise instalments, a slight portion of it's depth will be lost on you. Towards the end of the second act, a certain character gets added that slightly takes things in an unexpected way. Not that it's terrible. It just slightly separates from the more grounded tone the film's been going for. This may also be because I was watching this at 1a.m but between the first & third act but the film does slow down for quite a while until it almost feels a little too long. Halting the pacing like this was for the purpose of focusing on the development of character arcs. Nevertheless, some of this could have been cut out to make the experience a bit leaner.

Robot-Hand Villain Man *Terminator music almost plays*

11-12 Year old Dafne Keen makes her theatrical debut as Laura Kinney, the young mutant girl Charles & Logan must get from point A to point B, bonding with Logan further along the way. I love the relationship between these two characters as it develops over the second & third act. Although it feels like the role of Laura could've been played by any young girl with a set of scream-able lungs & a decent resting bitch face, Keen pulls off a terrifyingly awesome beastly scowl. The bond made with Wolverine with the additional bloody slicing & gore-ish violence made by Laura make her an emotionally wonderful add-on to Logan. 

He looks tired, defeated & too old for this shit

Final Thoughts
 
Going into Logan, I was expecting an R-Rated superhero film that focused on taking advantage of it's rating to the point of it being a fun, over-the-top gore fest at every opportunity. A lot of you will be expecting the same but hopefully you won't be disappointed with what you'll get instead: an emotional, depressing & violent experience about a man that's scarred & battered by the world, being forced to hold on to this last glimmer of hope. It just happens to be about Wolverine. Logan truly utilises it's free reign by being directed to draw out captivating performances of raw emotion & pain from Hugh Jackman & Patrick Stewart in a story that feels more human than any other film in the genre that's come before. It's not a superhero film. It's a Western drama about The Wolverine. The action is breath taking & the humour is great mainly because it's only present when it needs to be, naturally flowing realistically in the moment. It will take a lot out of you so you will need to be in the right mindset but if you know & love these characters; personal dramas or just raw, brutal action, you need to experience Logan at least once. Being such a unique & bold step away from it's genre, I'm looking forward to experiencing this final chapter again, probably shedding a tear at Wolverine & Professor X's final goodbye.
 

Rating: 8/10