Bad Movie In Almost Every Regard

Rating: Null/10 (4 September 2017)

Four pluses: 1) I always enjoy Patrick Stewart in just about anything; 2) Ditto Richard E. Grant; 3) The young actress who plays the new mutant (Dafne Keen) does very well in a role in which she is entirely (until almost the end) mute; 4) Johnny Cash's "When The Man Comes Around" plays over the end credits. Other than that, this is a Bad Movie in almost every regard. There is nothing in it that we haven't seen a hundred times before. In the title role, Hugh Jackman channels Humphrey Bogart as the cynical loner who doesn't want to get involved, who "sticks his neck out for nobody," until he goes all-in for the good side (Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, The Harder They Fall). The action/fights are very repetitious: heads roll, arms roll, blades penetrate bodies. Worst of all: it is a Road Trip movie where mis-matched characters have to bond during a long automobile journey.
A few years ago, I decided I needed to see more multiplex fare so squirmed my way through "Captain America" and "Thor" before I said "No more comic book super heroes." But I watched "Logan" because a production team spent six weeks in the New Mexico desert about 4 miles from my house filming the scenes that feature the old factory with the downed water tower that appear in the film's first half hour. On a morning run, I even saw the battered limousine (if you have seen the movie you know what I am talking about) being transported on a flat bed truck on its way to the filming location. When the set was first constructed, it was covered in the paper and TV news flew over in a helicopter, but that ended coverage so, apparently, there were no Hugh Jackman or Patrick Stewart sightings in Albuquerque. So it is possible – nay, even probable - that everything they did for that month and a half was all for green screen projection and no movie stars ever saw the place in person.