The tenth installment in its franchise, Logan is the game-changer no one expected. Besides the hype for Hugh Jackman's final performance of the legendary character and the morbid enthusiasm for an "Old Man Logan" adaptation, the film does so many things right that it feels more an unfortunately late Oscar contender than big-budget superhero movie.
Logan, now aged, drunk, and ill -- an apparent effect of long-term adamantium poisoning -- wearily works as a limo chauffeur and drug hustler on the dusty Texas border. He and another mutant (Caliban, at a much different time than in Apocalypse) care for the ailing 90-something Charles Xavier, whose failing mind and sporadic seizures threaten the lives of everyone around him. Apparently, we learn during the film, one such telepathic episode resulted in the deaths of many X-Men, who are now extinct. No new mutants have been born for a couple decades (the film's setting is 2029), but Xavier vaguely prophesies that one will come to them with a mission. In the same way that Unforgiven seemed to signal a sort of death of the Western genre, this film -- with its trio of dying, bitter men living as vagabonds in an impoverished post-apocalyptic desert -- seems to betoken a new genre: the death of superheroes.
When a nurse from biotech company Alkali-Transigen (yes, that Alkali) approaches our lackluster hero and importunes him to safeguard young Laura, Logan's nihilistic perspective is more fully articulated. The nurse's subsequent death at the hands of Reavers (cyborg thugs working for Transigen) reveals the company's murderous intent for Laura and seemingly all remaining mutants. Logan gathers Xavier and flees with Laura to "Eden", a haven for survivors. Along the dangerous journey, Logan eventually learns that Transigen has been using the blood of mutants to create their own, and that Laura is...well, that would be telling.
It's a strange structure for a film, at once detailed and simplistic. A stylistically postmodern Western married to an anti-superhero plot, Logan works best when its grizzled characters allow their heart to show through the cracks. The characters, so guarded and afraid, also love each other, and in those moments the film sparkles with the tears of our youth. Conversely, the film rocks its hardcore action sequences in a way that Apocalypse could not; fluid, organic physical violence that requires less digital effects and more old-fashioned smarts. A risky move, but brilliant and necessary.
This is not a film for children. Earning its R-rating and then some, its brutal, bloody violence shares screen time with no less brutal character development and emotional depth. If you thought Logan was world-weary in other installments, you've seen nothing yet. Jackman's nuanced performance is matched, however, by Patrick Stewart, whose now feeble character is pitiful and tragic, broken by his past yet still attempting to help the children in harm's way. When you're not gasping for air amidst the fighting, you're choking back tears. Besides strong language and buckets o' blood, the movie features few themes apart from death. Don't fool yourself, you won't feel good when it's done. That's the movie, bub.
IMDb: Logan
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