"Logan, you still have time..."

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2017)

I had a hard time just coming up with a title for this review. Because, honestly, how important is that when talking about a film like Logan? It's probably one of the few superhero movies I've seen that deserves to be called perfect. I just went to see this with a friend, and we agree that this film excited us, shocked the hell out of us, and presented us with characters that we love and are now all broken down, and a genuinely great story that follows how they spend their final days.
The plot here is that Wolverine, or James Howlett, or Logan (Hugh Jackman) is spending his days driving people around the city for cash to buy medicine for the now emotionally-broken and physically declining Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) with the help of fellow surviving mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant) who can't go out into the sun without burning severely. Logan himself is declining too, with scars forming on his body and his healing factor working much slower than before. Everything changes when Laura (Dafne Keen) walks into their lives and asks to be taken to a place called Eden in North Dakota. All the while, they are pursued by Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and Dr. Zandar Rice (Richard E. Grant), who want Laura back.
What I will say right now is that this movie will break the hearts of anyone who loves X-Men and the character of Wolverine. I can't give anything away, but I will tell you that there are moments that show you how much people like Logan and Xavier can screw up and how they have to live with their mistakes. Logan himself is at his lowest point and he convincingly acts in a way where you wonder who the man was underneath that Adamantium skeleton and those berserker rages. Xavier himself plays off Jackman very well. He talks like a bitter old grandfather at times who is unhappy with his "son" and yet acts like a grandfather who has the opposite personality: loving, understanding, and sharing his wisdom of the world with Laura. A scene where they watch Shane (1953) is especially touching.
Despite what other critics have said, the villains are great here. Holbrook is properly cruel and twisted and Grant plays the kind of villain you want to hate. The fact is, neither of them play super-powered bad guys who want to take over the world. This is one superhero film where I wouldn't have cared if the villains didn't get much backstory or dimension, because it is not their story; they are just forces that Logan and co. keep running into and are part of a less tolerant and more unfriendly government.
The violence is done well and Logan slicing his enemies up in a gory fashion is something we finally get to see. Here, Wolvie stabs people in places we haven't seen him stab before and whenever those claws do strike somebody, there's always blood. Logan shows that even though he's old, he's still a pro, and even then, we see that every new wound he receives in his state just slows him down even more and makes him worse.
Dafne Keen is definitely something of a complete surprise in terms of child acting. Even though she doesn't say much for most of the film, she nails the aggressive stares and animalistic and child-like tendencies very well. When she cries and is frightened, it feels very real, and not annoying like with many child actors. In fact, some may consider this a stretch, but she might be the best child actor I have ever seen in a movie.
The film seems to take a lot of cues from something like Mad Max, with similar desert landscapes, and the story of an aging iconic character who needs to get past his emotional pain and redeem himself is still exciting here. It worked with Rocky Balboa and James Bond in Skyfall, and it works here. It's clear that Logan feels pain and through his conversations with Xavier, it's obvious that he needs redemption. Its great script (filled with numerous earned curse words) drives one in to see if Logan actually achieves it.
To end, Logan is a fantastic movie. Period. Not "superhero" movie. This film will most likely make you question how good other superhero movies that you've seen really are, as it's doing to me now. I'm not kidding; this film will provide you with emotional satisfaction and leave you feeling like you had seen not a superhero movie, but something else entirely. Just be sure to bring plenty of tissues, because it will screw you up inside.