MOVIE REVIEW – Logan is not only the bloodiest, but also the darkest X-Men movie ever made. The first R-rated Wolverine movie is harsh, uncompromising, and absolutely fascinating.  Hugh Jackman is back again – one last time – as the older, sick, and gloomiest Wolverine ever.

 

It’s been 17 years since Hugh Jackman first appeared on the movie screen as Wolverine in the first X-Men movie. Since then, the cordial Aussie megastar has enjoyed nine movies as the mutant Wolverine to varying degrees of success. He quits the series with a considerable amount of class in James Mangold’s Logan — a rather brilliant mesh of dystopian and superhero story that proves to be as entertaining as it is opportune.

It’s bloody violent

PG-13 ratings on the X-Men franchise installments have limited what directors were willing to show onscreen. While slashing weapons do horrible damage to human bodies indeed, still, the movies have always been shy about positioning the doomed bad guys Wolverine takes out, concealing the wounds and dropping the bodies offscreen.

That shyness ends with Logan, the first R-rated Wolverine feature, with the first to openly, even lovingly focus on the character bisecting heads and punching through skulls. The movie is inspired by Deadpool’s immense financial success and Fox authorized director James Mangold (who also helmed 2013’s The Wolverine) and his crew to go hard-R on Logan, reportedly the last film to feature Hugh Jackman in the Wolverine role. In terms of graphic violence, profanity, and even a few stray seconds of female toplessness, they embrace the rating fully.

No more mutants

The year is 2029 and, in a set-up a bit reminiscent of Children of Men, people have stopped giving birth to mutants. Since he attracted a degree of fame for his various world-savings over the years, our hero lays low now in Southern Texas, employed as a limo driver just next to the Mexican border.

Logan shares his digs with a hypersensitive mutant named Caliban (Stephen Merchant) and his old pal Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Being that the professor has been suffering some form of dementia that has the potential to turn him into a walking W.M.D., Logan does his best to keep his old friend sedated.

Shit rudely this the fan thanks to the arrival of Laura (Dafne Keen), a young mutant girl -sporting the same adamantine claws as Logan – who is being hunted down by a group of elite soldiers. Taking the young girl and the old man with him, Logan hits the road with his limo to find Eden, which is a safe haven for mutants somewhere in North Dakota. The men are the employees of a shady company who have been breeding mutants outside of the U.S. in order to raise them as super soldiers.

Brutal fights, without effects galore

Not only is “Logan” the first R-rated iteration of this classic character but Mangold’s approach to action is unique for the Marvel film brand. The hyperactive editing, so much used nowadays is gone and so is the tons of CGI work used. We’re a lot closer to the action this time around, and it’s often shot from low to the ground, more like a “Bourne” film than a superhero movie. Also, the focus is more on fight choreography than editing. Hugh Jackman’s work in the fight scenes is very smooth but also character-driven in that Wolverine’s style reflects the no-nonsense approach of the character.

Logan also works in a few fantastic chase scenes later in the film, and again it doesn’t feel like the film stops and takes a break for set pieces as so many superhero movies do—the action is organic to the story and the characters, much like “Mad Max: Fury Road” in that regard.

Human heart beneath the body of the mutant

While the action is indeed brutal, there’s also a tender humanity theme in the movie, which gives Logan much more power than the bloody mayhem of the fight sequences. The heart of the film is the tormented relationship between Logan and Charles Xavier, who begrudge and still need each other in equal measure. Their relationship is marked by profanity and insults, and by Logan’s roughness and resentment.

Still, Jackman brings across a deep, sullen affection for the old man that undercuts all Logan’s gruff fury and refusal to play hero.

Stewart, for his part, turns Professor X into a truly tragic figure, on the verge of disintegration from age and trauma, and prone to sentimental obsession over Laura. He’s halfway between a shaking grandfather and the leader he used to be, and Mangold and his co-writers are spot-on with every bit of this epic tragedy out of how far he’s fallen, from a world-shaking telepath to a grumbling old man who needs to be bodily hauled into the toilet, protesting all the way. While he and Logan both hate their weakness and their reliance on each other, they’re still family at this point, with all the mutual dependence and complicated history that’s involved.

And then Laura joins the family, and her relationship with both men is just as key to the movie. Keen plays Laura as wordlessly feral, a raging echo of Logan in his younger days. Her resentment and resistance to this miserable new world are a match for his, but her indomitability and ferocious energy go a long way toward keeping the film from wallowing in its own misery.

Never look back?

“Logan” is the rare smash hit that could still be a game-changer. It will certainly change the way we look at other superhero movies and how history judges the entire MCU and DC Universe of films. While I still love a good popcorn superhero movie as much as the next guy, “Logan” still shows how deep one can go in the genre if they just approach it in a different way. In some way, “Logan” deconstructs the modern superhero movie and it will be very hard to put it back together again.

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