Logan - directed by James Mangold
"Logan" is unlike any 'superhero' movie that I have ever seen.
We've had R rated examples of the genre before - "The Punisher" and its sequel and the recent "Deadpool" for example but it isn't the brutal violence, the profanity or the nudity that
separates this film from the pack.
It is in fact many things but the big one is tone.
If you thought "The Punisher" was dark you are in for a shock with "Wolverine".
And if you thought that "Deadpool" was violent and profane- think again.
Both movies are respectively dark and violent and profane but it is the kind of dark and the sort of violence and the way that language is used in "Logan" that makes it so different.
It feels grounded in some sort of reality.
It's not at all a comic book movie.
"Deadpool" felt ripped right from the pages of the source material - jokey, colourful and hell bent on being funny while "Logan" feels like it is inspired by Sergio Leone's Man With No Name series or Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia".
It is earthy, sweaty, dirty, violent and filled with death.
It's the superhero movie as a Western and it is about as close to a masterpiece as we have had in the the genre since "The Dark Knight".
This film is based in 2029 and we find all of the mutants gone apart from Logan, Charles Xavier and Caliban.
The trio live out in the desert in a toppled water tower and a tin warehouse.
Charles is succumbing to dementia, Logan is losing his healing and eternal youth abilities thanks to adamantium poisoning and Caliban is desperately cowering from the sun lest it burns his flesh right off his bones.
Logan is working as a limo driver to make enough money to buy black market drugs to keep Charles' mind from wreaking havoc on everyone around him.
Without the drugs to keep his damaged mind in check he could literally kill people for miles around him.
Caliban can still track other mutants but his power is weakened and of course there isn't much for him to track anyway.
But a mutant does appear in the form of young Laura - aka: X-23.
She is basically a young, female Wolverine with the claws to match.
And she is being pursued by a group of mercenaries who work for the organisation that created her.
I will touch on the performances later but for now it needs to be said that newcomer Dafne Keen is quite extraordinary as Laura 'X23'. The characters requires physicality as much as it does inner turmoil. X23 was created in a lab and unleashed on a world that she has no sense of and Keen does a wonderful job portraying the characters wild, unrestrained savagery without losing sight of the child that she still is.
This film has been compared to Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" and to "Shane" and although Shane is shown and discussed in the film and even quoted at one point tonally it isn't the right comparison.
I have mentioned Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" but other films from the director also sprang to mind as I watched "Logan".
There is a bit of "The Ballad of Cable Hogue", a touch of "Straw Dogs" and even some "Wild Bunch" in it.
Like Pike and his gang in the latter film Logan, Charles and Caliban don't fit into their world any more.
They never did completely but now any connection is largely gone and they have only each other.
There is an exchange in "The Wild Bunch that I have always liked...
Pike: This was gonna be my last. Ain't gettin' around any better. I'd like to make one good score and back off.
Dutch: Back off to what? Have you got anything lined up?
In the case of Logan, Charles and Caliban they too have nothing left to retreat to.
Their desert seclusion is still not enough - the old foes still find them.
In the opening scene Logan finds carjackers trying to steal the rims off the car he is napping in.
He is content to scare them off but they are know only a world where men are merely men and not mutants.
The result is the first clue that this film is like no X-Men movie before it.
The violence is sudden, frenetic and without stylistic flourishes.
There is no swirling camera or vertiginous tracking shots and when steel claws connect with flesh it doesn't shy away with PG-13 friendly out of shot slashes.
Blood spurts, chunks of flesh fly off and people lie dead not arranged neatly, peacefully prone but dying or dead in incomplete pieces - a limb, a hand or a head short.
This violence is in the service of the tone that director Mangold embraces wholly and never strays from.
These characters have all been damaged from time and their actions weigh heavily.
They are weak, broken, bitter and scared of the mortality that they have never truly faced up to.
Even Logan who has lived several lifetimes already is not healing like he used to.
Charles is losing the one thing that he could always count on - his mind.
Rather than the powerful weapon for peace that he always wielded it as now he finds himself unable to control it and it is hurting people - killing them even.
He and Charles talk about by a boat on which they can sail away and live out their lives in true seclusion so that they cannot hurt anyone but neither really believes that this is anything more than a pipedream.
The pair bicker and snipe at each other but it is clear that there is a bond there built over decades of friendship.
And friendship it is- there is no mentor role for Charles any longer.
Patrick Stewart is given far more to do with the great character than ever before and the great actor clearly relishes it.
His voice is frail but still there is that Charles Xavier wisdom - unwavering and never wrong.
Stephen Merchant who is best known as Ricky Gervais' frequent partner in crime in comedies like "The Office" and "Life's Too Short" plays it totally straight as Caliban and is startlingly good.
I was utterly blown away by how effective his performance was.
But the star here is Hugh Jackman.
He has always been great as Wolverine / Logan but here there is more depth, more emotion and the character is about something.
I've always felt that something was missing from the character.
As much as I love "X2: X-Men United" and indeed all of the X-Men movies there was always the sense that the character was watered down.
The films felt scared to explore the character fully and the requirements of a PG-13 stifled him.
Here it is not just the violence or the language that frees Wolverine up but the resulting ability to show his inner torment via outward action.
When he resorts to violence it has impact not only on the audience but clearly on the character.
We've seen him go full berserker before or so we thought.
This time it is different - it's wild, uncontrolled, animalistic and bloody.
His drinking too is different.
We've see Wolverine slouched in chairs or at bars knocking back booze but it is a sanitised drunk that we are watching.
Here he is sweaty, groggy and clearly drinking for all the wrong reasons.
This isn't a cheap layer to make a character look edgy- it is a deep character flaw in all of its ugliness.
The villains too - of which I will not reveal much - are well served by this adherence to character and tone.
Often the weakest part of the current round of 'comic book' movies here they are nasty not in a comic book way but in an all too human manner.
For all of the grimness and harshness of the characters, the violence and the events in "Logan" it still manages to reveal a lot of heart.
It is frequently touching.
A lot of it is the interactions between the characters - all of them.
Each of the four main 'hero' figures - Logan, Charles, Caliban and X23 have moments with each other that really resonate.
They feel like real people from our own world even if we are still acutely aware that it isn't.
And with everything that succeeds here- and really everything does- it is the sense that these are real people whose lives matter that stayed with me the most as I thought back on the film I had just watched tonight.
The history that I have with these great characters felt like it had been honoured, expanded and enriched by what I had seen.
"Logan" is smart, emotional and frankly almost perfect.
It shows that when allowed room to breathe and be and show what it needs to this genre still has things left to do and say.
RATING: 92 / 100
CONCLUSION: An amazing film that shows that the superhero genre has been stifled too long by the perceived requirements of the pursuit of a wide audience. If "Deadpool" showed that an R rating is commercially viable then "Logan" shows in no uncertain terms that it is likewise artistically viable - necessary even. Brilliant on every level.
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant, Boyd Holbrook, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E Grant, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse, Jayson Genao, Hannah Westerfield
Screenplay: Scott Frank, James Mangold & Michael Green
Music Score by: Marco Beltrami
Cinematography: John Mathieson
Edited by: Michael McCusker & Dirk Westervelt
Running Time: 137 minutes
Language: English
Rated: R16 - Profanity, Bloody Violence, Brief nudity (boobs)
Running Time: 137 minutes
Language: English
Rated: R16 - Profanity, Bloody Violence, Brief nudity (boobs)
We've had R rated examples of the genre before - "The Punisher" and its sequel and the recent "Deadpool" for example but it isn't the brutal violence, the profanity or the nudity that
separates this film from the pack.
It is in fact many things but the big one is tone.
If you thought "The Punisher" was dark you are in for a shock with "Wolverine".
And if you thought that "Deadpool" was violent and profane- think again.
Both movies are respectively dark and violent and profane but it is the kind of dark and the sort of violence and the way that language is used in "Logan" that makes it so different.
It feels grounded in some sort of reality.
It's not at all a comic book movie.
"Deadpool" felt ripped right from the pages of the source material - jokey, colourful and hell bent on being funny while "Logan" feels like it is inspired by Sergio Leone's Man With No Name series or Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia".
It is earthy, sweaty, dirty, violent and filled with death.
It's the superhero movie as a Western and it is about as close to a masterpiece as we have had in the the genre since "The Dark Knight".
This film is based in 2029 and we find all of the mutants gone apart from Logan, Charles Xavier and Caliban.
The trio live out in the desert in a toppled water tower and a tin warehouse.
Charles is succumbing to dementia, Logan is losing his healing and eternal youth abilities thanks to adamantium poisoning and Caliban is desperately cowering from the sun lest it burns his flesh right off his bones.
Logan is working as a limo driver to make enough money to buy black market drugs to keep Charles' mind from wreaking havoc on everyone around him.
Without the drugs to keep his damaged mind in check he could literally kill people for miles around him.
Caliban can still track other mutants but his power is weakened and of course there isn't much for him to track anyway.
But a mutant does appear in the form of young Laura - aka: X-23.
She is basically a young, female Wolverine with the claws to match.
And she is being pursued by a group of mercenaries who work for the organisation that created her.
I will touch on the performances later but for now it needs to be said that newcomer Dafne Keen is quite extraordinary as Laura 'X23'. The characters requires physicality as much as it does inner turmoil. X23 was created in a lab and unleashed on a world that she has no sense of and Keen does a wonderful job portraying the characters wild, unrestrained savagery without losing sight of the child that she still is.
 |
| Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Stephen Merchant |
I have mentioned Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" but other films from the director also sprang to mind as I watched "Logan".
There is a bit of "The Ballad of Cable Hogue", a touch of "Straw Dogs" and even some "Wild Bunch" in it.
Like Pike and his gang in the latter film Logan, Charles and Caliban don't fit into their world any more.
They never did completely but now any connection is largely gone and they have only each other.
There is an exchange in "The Wild Bunch that I have always liked...
Pike: This was gonna be my last. Ain't gettin' around any better. I'd like to make one good score and back off.
Dutch: Back off to what? Have you got anything lined up?
In the case of Logan, Charles and Caliban they too have nothing left to retreat to.
Their desert seclusion is still not enough - the old foes still find them.
In the opening scene Logan finds carjackers trying to steal the rims off the car he is napping in.
He is content to scare them off but they are know only a world where men are merely men and not mutants.
The result is the first clue that this film is like no X-Men movie before it.
The violence is sudden, frenetic and without stylistic flourishes.
There is no swirling camera or vertiginous tracking shots and when steel claws connect with flesh it doesn't shy away with PG-13 friendly out of shot slashes.
Blood spurts, chunks of flesh fly off and people lie dead not arranged neatly, peacefully prone but dying or dead in incomplete pieces - a limb, a hand or a head short.
This violence is in the service of the tone that director Mangold embraces wholly and never strays from.
These characters have all been damaged from time and their actions weigh heavily.
They are weak, broken, bitter and scared of the mortality that they have never truly faced up to.
Even Logan who has lived several lifetimes already is not healing like he used to.
Charles is losing the one thing that he could always count on - his mind.
Rather than the powerful weapon for peace that he always wielded it as now he finds himself unable to control it and it is hurting people - killing them even.
 |
| Dafne Keen as X-23 - Laura... remarkable in scenes of both violent action and touching drama |
The pair bicker and snipe at each other but it is clear that there is a bond there built over decades of friendship.
And friendship it is- there is no mentor role for Charles any longer.
Patrick Stewart is given far more to do with the great character than ever before and the great actor clearly relishes it.
His voice is frail but still there is that Charles Xavier wisdom - unwavering and never wrong.
Stephen Merchant who is best known as Ricky Gervais' frequent partner in crime in comedies like "The Office" and "Life's Too Short" plays it totally straight as Caliban and is startlingly good.
I was utterly blown away by how effective his performance was.
But the star here is Hugh Jackman.
He has always been great as Wolverine / Logan but here there is more depth, more emotion and the character is about something.
I've always felt that something was missing from the character.
As much as I love "X2: X-Men United" and indeed all of the X-Men movies there was always the sense that the character was watered down.
The films felt scared to explore the character fully and the requirements of a PG-13 stifled him.
Here it is not just the violence or the language that frees Wolverine up but the resulting ability to show his inner torment via outward action.
When he resorts to violence it has impact not only on the audience but clearly on the character.
We've seen him go full berserker before or so we thought.
This time it is different - it's wild, uncontrolled, animalistic and bloody.
His drinking too is different.
We've see Wolverine slouched in chairs or at bars knocking back booze but it is a sanitised drunk that we are watching.
Here he is sweaty, groggy and clearly drinking for all the wrong reasons.
This isn't a cheap layer to make a character look edgy- it is a deep character flaw in all of its ugliness.
 |
| Villains.... Boyd Holbrook (left) and Richard E Grant (right) |
Often the weakest part of the current round of 'comic book' movies here they are nasty not in a comic book way but in an all too human manner.
For all of the grimness and harshness of the characters, the violence and the events in "Logan" it still manages to reveal a lot of heart.
It is frequently touching.
A lot of it is the interactions between the characters - all of them.
Each of the four main 'hero' figures - Logan, Charles, Caliban and X23 have moments with each other that really resonate.
They feel like real people from our own world even if we are still acutely aware that it isn't.
And with everything that succeeds here- and really everything does- it is the sense that these are real people whose lives matter that stayed with me the most as I thought back on the film I had just watched tonight.
The history that I have with these great characters felt like it had been honoured, expanded and enriched by what I had seen.
"Logan" is smart, emotional and frankly almost perfect.
It shows that when allowed room to breathe and be and show what it needs to this genre still has things left to do and say.
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