WHO KNEW that in their most violent outing yet, Marvel would present Hugh Jackman with such a great acting challenge?
Or, for that matter, give Patrick Stewart the chance to act instead of simply conform to the calm parameters of Professor X from the comic books.
Sad, poignant and still so topical in the way it presents mutants as a stand-in for those who are persecuted for being different, the film is also dripping in swearwords. But, it does kind of make sense because this is not a safe comic book for children. Instead it is the swan song for a relationship that goes back to the first X-Men movie when the professor offered to help Wolverine figure out who he is.
In his third stand-alone film as Wolverine, Jackman gives us a world-weary Logan who is more than ready to just let go, except he has one last responsibility, to take care of the person who gave him a family.
The film deliberately and subtly references old Western Shane, in which a tired gunslinger finds himself playing hero despite thinking of himself as a relic from a forgotten past.
The film moves like a Western – not just because of the Shane references – turning into one long journey as Logan reluctantly takes a young girl under his wing to get her to a safe haven. While the landscape they are moving through is a thoroughly modern network of roads, Wolverine is still the gunslinger on the run.
Jackman’s performance is nuanced – no longer amnesiac Logan is feeling his age and trying really hard to just stay drunk, but responsibility keeps on jerking him back to the real world.
Depending on whether he has taken his meds, the professor can still be sweetly inspirational, or irritatingly childish, or fiercely independent and Stewart doesn’t overplay his hand.
Set in the not to distant future Logan takes some inspiration from graphic novel Old Man Logan and plays around with a recurrent theme in the Marvel comic books – the cloning of superheroes, and especially of Wolverine.
Going as James Howlett, Logan drives a limo for money, in between crossing the Mexican border to take care of the now very old, possibly senile Charles Xavier (Stewart).
Not only does Logan have to contend with the most powerful mind on Earth spiraling out of control, but you quickly realise that mutants are an extinct thing of the past, with no new mutants born in the present generation.
A potentially lucrative fare turns into a nightmare for Logan though and he ends up on the run with a child in tow – a taciturn little girl named Laura (Keen is an intense little thing who could give Eleven from Stranger Things a run for her money) who seems to have a similar mutation to his.
Comic book fans will totally get the X23 and X24 references and who knows, there might even be some easter eggs about the future of X-Men movies without Jackman and Stewart.
While totally steeped in Marvel lore Logan is decidedly not a comic book movie. Director James Mangold ignores the whiz bang CGI of big effects to rather get under the skin of the people – instead of threatening the world with some big bad, it is a few people who are at risk but we care because we get to know them a little better.
The film more than earns its no person under 16 age restriction because of some brutal violence, but the bloodshed never becomes gratuitous – instead the killings have consequences. Wolverine has always given in to a berserker rage when the occasion warrants but this older version of the character just wants out, even if the world just keeps on butting in.
He warns little Laura that she will carry these killings with her, but like any child she doesn’t quite get what he means until it is too late.
LOGAN
DIRECTOR: James Mangold
CAST: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Stephen Merchant, Dafne Keen, Richard E Grant, Boyd Holbrook
CLASSIFICATION: 16 LV
RUNNING TIME: 138 minutes
Theresa the WordSmith 