He does what he does best for the last time.

Rating: 8/10 (4 March 2017)

For some us, the 21st Century began on that July weekend in 2000 when the first X-MEN movie was released; with a record box office take for its time, it proved that comic heroes other than DC's Superman and Batman could find an audience with movie goers and ushered in the era of the big comic book tent pole. It also introduced us to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, one of the most perfect pieces of casting of all time, with Patrick Stewart's Professor Charles Xavier a close second. Now, nearly seventeen years later, these first generation movie comic icons take their final bow in LOGAN, the last appearance for both Jackman and Stewart in the roles that fit them like a glove.
How does their swan song stack up:
The hero: we find Jackman's Logan not fairing so well in the future of 2029. This is a world where mutants have mostly disappeared, exactly how is not completely explained, but a disaster at Xavier's institute is alluded to more than once, a calamity for which the Professor may have been responsible. Logan, as Wolverine now calls himself, is not doing so good as he lives in Texas near the Mexican border, working as a limo driver, drinking too much and looking after a very aged and nearly senile Charles Xavier. He looks terrible as admantium poisoning is starting to take its toll and his regenerative power is starting to give out. He's also haunted by terrible memories and suffering the effects of grief and guilt. This Wolverine is a shell of the mutant hero we knew in the earlier films, all the better for when he is called upon to summon the old fire and rage to square off against the villains; Jackman can do the avenging hero just fine, but I think his best moments come when Logan hits the bottom in scenes of defeat and bitter regret. They set the table for when Wolverine rises up and does what does better than anyone else.
The plot: In a lot of ways, LOGAN is not a superhero movie, but a western with a little Mad Max thrown in; it even directly invokes the classic, SHANE. This is underscored by having the action set in the real American west as Logan reluctantly comes to the aid of a young girl named Laura whose powers closely resemble his own. The story turns on a journey to North Dakota, where Laura hopes to meet up with the other young escapees from a secret lab in Mexico where a nefarious corporation (a comic book and movie trope) is breeding test tube mutants. Logan and Charles Xavier hit the road with a bunch of corporate hired guns in hot pursuit. The small child in danger and needing the protection of a super human guardian is a template taken right from TERMINATOR 2, except here the small child is a killing machine all her own, and we are treated to some great action scenes and a high body count (good guys and bad guys alike) before a showdown in the far north. Despite a running time of over two hours, the movie keeps moving along and is not as convoluted as most other comic adaptations. You don't have to be overly familiar with the long and twisted history of the X-Men franchise to enjoy LOGAN, but it helps.
The actors: Jackman and Stewart truly do their characters justice, sending them out with real grace notes, but the revelation is young Dafne Keen as Laura, the deadly tween with admantium claws. The bad ass girl has become something of a pop culture cliché, but Keen's performance transcends it, she is simply marvelous and her scenes with Jackman and Stewart are well written and well played. The villains of the piece are Boyd Holbroke and Richard E. Grant, as the enhanced mercenary and requisite evil doctor; and both of them are really rotten without any redeeming quality, such a relief from other comic movies where the bad guy is a tragic mirror of the hero. Stephen Merchant is Caliban, a character familiar to any X-Men comic readers.
The special effects: There are no omnipotent personifications of evil threatening the earth here, so there thankfully are no scenes of skyscrapers crumbling and cites falling, but what we do have is lots of good R rated blood and gore as we get the berserk Wolverine using his powers the way we always wanted to see them used. Limbs are severed; skulls are punctured and decapitated with state of the art precision. At times it's as if Sam Peckinpah had returned from the afterlife and directed a super hero movie (Bloody Sam was actually offered SUPERMAN in 1977, but turned it down).
Director James Mangold makes good use of the restricted rating by allowing Logan to spit out a bunch of obscenities the PG-13 Wolverine wasn't allowed to use. This is not a movie for young kids.
And if a critic describes LOGAN as "not like any other comic book movie," then they clearly hate comic book movies.
I couldn't think of a better finale for Wolverine than the one LOGAN gives him, that final image is one of the most memorable of any recent movie. But now that we're done with Wolverine and Charles Xavier, let's explore some of the other great characters in the X-Men universe; it's about time we get that Gambit film they've been promising and how about a stand alone Quicksilver movie, then there is Cannonball And Emma Frost.