Logan (2017)

I didn’t expect to tear up watching a superhero film. Logan broke that expectation. The story of an aging, exhausted Wolverine lingers in the memory not through spectacular battle sequences but through conversations inside a battered pickup truck. James Mangold succeeded in making a Marvel Comics superhero the protagonist of a human drama. My rating is ★4.5. A film you can watch even if you don’t enjoy superhero movies.

What it’s about — An Old and Weary Wolverine

2029. No new mutants have been born. An aging Logan (Hugh Jackman) with deteriorating regenerative abilities is quietly protecting Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) near the Texas-Mexico border. Then he encounters a mutant girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) who was created from his own DNA, and receives a request to take her somewhere safe. Inspired by the source comic Old Man Logan. Made as an R-rated film.

Direction — A Hero Film Made as a Western

James Mangold made this film through the grammar of the Western. The desolate Texas desert, worn-out cars, a small number of characters passing through a vast landscape — it calls to mind Clint Eastwood’s Westerns. Inside the frame, the daily struggle to endure in a tired body gets more screen time than a hero’s action. The R rating means the consequences of violence are depicted directly, and that makes this film different from other Marvel films.

Particularly memorable is the scene where Charles Xavier and Logan sit at an ordinary family’s dinner table. The peace of that moment is all the more painful because you know it is temporary.

Performance — Hugh Jackman Distilling Seventeen Years

Hugh Jackman delivers a performance that distils the entire history of the character in his final turn as Wolverine after seventeen years. Fatigue, self-loathing, and a small flicker of hope all coexist in him. Patrick Stewart portrays Charles Xavier — losing control as he deteriorates — with devastating conviction. Watching someone who was very powerful become fragile, rendered with equanimity: that is the performance here. Dafne Keen, who expresses Laura through her body alone in the first half and then erupts emotionally in the second half, is impressive throughout.

What the film says — A Father-Daughter Story

Logan is ultimately a father-daughter story. Logan doesn’t want a child and believes he deserves no protection — but Laura dismantles that wall. The reason the film borrows the Western frame is because of this relationship. An aging gunfighter and a young travelling companion: a structure repeated countless times in Westerns, but one that works here with the greatest emotional resonance. What Laura does at the film’s conclusion condenses everything this film is. It thoroughly subverts the clichés of superhero films while staying faithful to the emotional core of what the genre can deliver — that is what separates Logan from a simple “dark superhero film.”

Ratings & reception

IMDb score is 8.1, the highest in the entire X-Men series. Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 93%. The fact that this superhero film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay was highly unusual. It is widely assessed as having raised the benchmark for the dramatic depth that superhero films can achieve.

What doesn’t work

The villain’s motivation and plan in the middle section is somewhat thin. Since the film’s strength lies in emotional drama, this is a relatively small problem, but the density of action sequences is uneven. The film also benefits from some prior familiarity with the X-Men series, since knowing the history of Logan and Charles’s relationship makes their dynamic richer.

Verdict

Logan wore a superhero film’s costume and told a real story inside it. It is about aging and dissolution, responsibility and protection, and giving the final chapter of a life meaning. You don’t need to know the Marvel universe to be moved by it — any viewer who wants good drama can find it here. ★4.5.

Recommended for

• Those who want human drama rather than a superhero film
• Fans who want to bring the Wolverine series to a close with Hugh Jackman
• Those drawn to road movie sensibility with a Western touch