Logan (March 2017)

Official Australian release date: 2/3/17. Viewed: 2/3/17.

Director: James Mangold

Actors: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: MA

‘Logan’ is the final (we’ll see) Wolverine film, in addition to the six X-Men films, so it’s safe to say it’s Jackman’s last outing – it’s been a good 17 years! ‘Logan’ is again directed by Mangold, who did the previous film (‘The Wolverine’) and is set in 2029 – when Logan/James Howlett is ~200 and Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart) is ~90. They do a great job of making them both look and seem way older than their appearances in the last few films! It’s great to see Logan as an every-man drifter, working as a limo driver between El Paso and Mexico, where he’s looking after Prof X with his dementia. Clearly, some tragedy has befallen them and it’s alluded to a few times.

The “near-future” looks very realistic – almost the same as now, but with driverless trucks and giant robotic harvesting machines. No futuristic ray guns or anything! It’s also cool to see Wolverine kill about five people and swear about 10 times in the first 3min – well-earned MA rating! Also, very true to the comics, where some of the story is from Millar’s ‘Old Man Logan’ (highly recommended). Once X-23/Laura (Keen) comes into it, the film becomes a Western, with Logan trying to protect Prof X & Laura from Donald Pierce (Holbrook – fun bad guy) as they go on a cross-country chase.

There’s some plausible plot, only tentatively linking in with previous films, but particularly X-23 and X-24 (i.e. Wolverine as “Weapon X” was X-1, but this time the experiments were in Mexico, not Canada…) showing Logan both his past and potential future. Getting to see his healing-factor wane and have to face his mortality, as well as reluctantly be the good guy, is all true to character and pulled off expertly by Jackman. It’s long (2.25 hours), with lots of nice, character-building moments – particularly with the family at the farm house. Keen is good as Laura and Merchant has a nice role as Caliban. It’s also touching and poignant in plenty of scenes (good score), but there’s heaps of action and violence too – especially the final 25min, with it all well executed.

Overall: Fantastic finale – I hope they leave Wolverine for quite a few years now!

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.