LOGAN - A Movie Review

It's been a while since I've written, mostly due to an increasingly busy schedule, but also due to there not being many movies that have blown my skirt up of late. 'Logan' has ended this drought.

Spoiler Warning - be advised that I won't be skirting around any explicit plot points here. 

Simply put, 'Logan' is the best film to come from the superhero genre since 'The Dark Knight'. Director James Mangold has crafted a perfect swan song for the role Hugh Jackman has held for almost 17 years. The film is expertly crafted, wonderfully acted, powerful and thought-provoking. If Chris Nolan gave us a morality tale posing as a superhero movie by way of a crime drama, Mangold has given us poignant rumination on death, legacy, and heroism posing as a road trip.

Anchored by a career performance from Jackman, 'Logan' very much feels like the culmination of everything the various writers and directors have done with the Wolverine over the years. Thematically, if there's one thread that has been woven throughout Hugh Jackman's entire time as Logan, it's the question of identity. Bryan Singer first brought Wolverine to the big-screen asking literally "who is this man? where did he come from?" And while we tend to gloss over the failure of his first solo outing, the second, also directed by Mangold, gave us a Logan who knew exactly who he was, and was determined to change. While 'The Wolverine' gave us our first look at a depressed and reclusive hero struggling to emerge from a self-imposed exile, 'Logan' takes the character's depression to a much more consuming and damaged depth.

Dipping back into the fertile ground of a weakened Wolverine, Mangold shows us a Logan whose healing factor is failing, his bones are creaking and poisoning him, and his claws are barely functional. With pus leaking from his knuckles, they're almost more pain than they're worth. In addition to his physical weaknesses, Logan is a full blown alcoholic now, and carries with him an adamantium bullet, just in case he ever works up the nerve to blow his own head off. Through his interactions with Laura, we know he's deeply ashamed of the deaths he's caused. But less obvious is the survivor's guilt he is clearly feeling in the wake of the death of the X-Men.

We've had other superhero films deal with the themes of death and loss before, but never like this. No superhero has ever had to worry about simply dying of old age. For a genre that often struggles to be relatable  to us mere mortals, 'Logan' is almost painfully too relatable. Not only is Logan himself falling apart, but he is also saddled with taking care of an ailing Charles Xavier. Crippled by dementia, Xavier's brain is more dangerous than ever simply because he can no longer control it. For someone who has had to care for an elder family member, it may hit too close to home. The heartbreak of his senility is only made worse by his moments of lucidity. That is a testament to Patrick Stewart's performance, and if there's some justice in the world, he'll at least be in the conversation for an oscar nomination.

And yet, thrust into this story of death and decay is a tiny little girl who sports adamantium claws of her own and a familiar tendency to whip them out at the slightest provocation. Dafne Keen does a wonderful job as Laura Kinney, aka X-23, the young clone of Wolverine. Silent for two-thirds of the film (except for some intimidating growls and, for want of a better term, roars) Keen does a great job conveying wonder, confusion, anger, rage, love and pain just with her very expressive face. By the time she actually does speak, you're almost surprised she can find even more depths to plum.

While Laura's arrival into Logan and Xavier's world sets the plot in motion, it also provides a relevant tale about the interaction of age and youth, the future with the past, and leaving behind more than just a legacy of regret. For much of the film, Logan is a reluctant participant, only popping his claws to protect Charles or his limo. Even the arrival of The Reavers, a group of cybernetically enhanced mercenaries, and a full-blown clone of himself, dubbed X-24, aren't enough to fully snap Logan out of his funk. Oh sure, he fights and he fights hard against them. But when the fights are over, he's more than happy to slink away again and crawl back into a bottle. It's not until he realizes that he can save Laura from going down the same path of violence and rage that he took, that Logan wakes up his real desire to fight again.

"Don't be what they made you" Logan tells her. While his own clone is completely devoid of any sort of rational capabilities, Logan recognizes that Laura has the potential to be good, and to find the sort of peaceful* life Logan himself was unable to find. That he is willing to die just for that potential shows that he is indeed what he insisted he never was: a hero.

*the mirrored scenes of Charles being buried near water, and then Logan's final resting place echo that elusive desire for peace. Logan barely being able to say anything at Xavier's graveside illustrates how important it was for him to find some sort of beauty for Charles to be near for eternity. 

Thematically, 'Logan' is obviously a very rich film. But technically, it's very much unlike any other comic book film I can think of, save maybe Dredd. The opening few minutes feel very much like an indie movie eschewing the need for some massive action set-piece in favor of sparse titles and Logan beating up some car thieves. It's a pretty far cry from the Nightcrawler sequence that opened 'X2' or the powerful Nagasaki scene that opened 'The Wolverine'. Mangold has moved almost completely away from the feeling of the last Wolverine movie and has created something that looks more like the westerns that were clearly an influence. Even scenes that play on a midwest farm and North Dakota still have that arid, hot, lifeless feeling of the western desert. The vastly different look of 'The Wolverine' and 'Logan' almost make it hard to believe it's the same film crew behind both movies.

As a director, Mangold is fully confident in nearly every single scene. Everything services the mostly original story, written by Mangold, Scott Frank and Michael Green, and while it obviously takes a few cues from Old Man Logan (especially with regards to the fate of the X-Men) it never feels like an adaptation. It unfolds in a way that somehow feels both surprising and inevitable - much like death itself. The action pieces are some of the best in recent memory, getting away from the wanton destruction of CGI monsters and focusing on the fragility of the human body when it comes face to face with adamantium claws. Swearing and violence aside, this movie simply had to be rated R. It would and could not be the same film if made within the confines of something meant for younger, more sensitive audiences.

I've failed to mention several things in this review that ought to be mentioned; Stephen Merchant, Boyd Holbrook, and Eriq LaSalle all bring their A-game to the movie. Composer Marco Beltrami eschews the typical loud superhero themes for mostly sedate melodies that amplify the drama. The few times that the score does move toward something more rousing, it does so in a way that ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels (the casino scene, especially). Basically, everyone who worked on this movie did a fucking amazing job.

I haven't walked out of a movie this emotionally drained in a long time. That is saying something. Mangold and Jackman have done something wondrous and rare. 'Logan' is a perfect film. Not a perfect comic book, or superhero film. There are no qualifiers here. It's simply perfect from beginning to end.

FINAL SCORE - 10/10