There was a moment, a little more than halfway through Logan — the X-Men franchise's emotional send-off for Hugh Jackman, who has played the role of Wolverine since 2000 — when it occurred to me that this is more than the standard superhero fare that Marvel has spent the last decade perfecting and turning into a several billion dollar industry. It wasn’t during one of the movie’s incredibly tense action sequences, nor was it even at a critical moment in the plot; on the contrary, it was a simple and seemingly nondescript dinner scene between Logan, Charles Xavier, Laura (the young girl featured in the trailers) and a family that offered to let the three stay in their home for the night during their journey north to the Canadian border. Logan, anxious to get the girl north as quickly as possible with an army hot on their trail trying to stop them, is of course, reluctant to accept their offer of food and shelter, but Xavier pleads for the three of them to slow down and enjoy the peaceful company of the family. The dinner sequence itself is devoid of action or any grand emotional apex — it was just a wonderful and poignant moment of characterization, to remind you that regardless of their title of ‘mutant,’ these three at the center of the film are actual people, rather than just merciless killin’ machines. That is not to say that the film does not indulge in the excessive spectacle of violence that has come to define the comic book movie industry, as it is bloodier than any in the genre, save for perhaps Deadpool. But, in taking time in the midst of the intense plot for a scene of quiet character building, Logan proved itself as having ambitions that go beyond raking in nine-digit numbers at the box office.
Set in the year 2029, Logan is centered around its curmudgeonly titular character (Jackman), whose life in the X-Men has been displaced by a job as a chauffeur and a caretaker of the elderly and ailing Xavier (Patrick Stewart). After a nurse at a Mexican hospital that illegally and artificially produces mutants reaches out to Logan to help him save a young girl (Laura, played by Dafne Keen) that she smuggled out of the inhumane conditions, he and Xavier must travel north from Texas to the North Dakota-Canada border to find a supposed safe haven for mutants. The three, however, are relentlessly pursued in their journey by the private army of a powerful corporation, Transigen, that is behind the production of the new mutants.
Directed by James Mangold and co-written by Mangold, Scott Frank and Michael Green, Logan is an incredibly well-crafted film that seamlessly blends aspects of both big budget action and emotionally-jarring drama. Whereas in a lesser film the two may have felt a bit disconnected (see: 2016’s Civil War), the crew members here do a tremendous job of maintaining a consistent tone throughout the movie. The many scenes of intense action (which are all fantastically designed, choreographed and shot) maintain the understanding that there is more at stake than some really cool violence; on the other hand, the movie’s quieter moments have a sense of urgency to them driven by the constant looming threat of Transigen.
As touched on in the opening, the writers put a great deal of effort into fleshing out the three characters central to the plot, and Jackman and Stewart both turn in inspired performances in their final X-Men film. Though the main draw of the movie among general audiences is more than likely its R-rating and elaborate action set pieces, Logan is sure to tug on the heartstrings a few times before its 137-minute runtime is up. A case can be made that the film is missing a single clear antagonist and the motives of the opposition are generally underwritten, but the title makes it very clear — this is a movie about Logan himself (as well as Xavier and the new generation of mutants), and there’s no chance that he will be upstaged by the plans of a scheming bad guy.
Logan, the last breath of the 2000s X-Men franchise that I and so many others grew up watching, can be described as nothing less than a perfect send off for Jackman after seventeen years of tireless, mostly bad-ass duty. I recommend this film to pretty much anyone old enough to get into the theater unless shedding tears makes you insecure about your masculinity, in which case, keep pumpin’ those fifty-pound dumbbells, bro.
Five stars (out of five).
