If ever there were an unwanted entry in the bloated superhero canon, Logan would, at first glance, seem to be it. Hugh Jackman has now played the character in nine X-Men movies since the turn of the century, including two stand-alones, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine from 2013.
Do we really need another one?
Turns out we do. Just the one, mind you. Logan, set in the near-future of 2029, finds the allegedly immortal James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine pushing 150 and aging ungracefully. Never the cheeriest of superheroes, in this chapter, he’s crankier than Tommy Lee Jones falling off a horse.
In the opening scene, the man with the adamantium claws takes out a posse of would-be car thieves. It’s not a pretty fight, and he limps away afterwards rather than striding off, but the outcome is never in much doubt. It’s a bit like taking on Arnold Schwarzenegger or Clint Eastwood. They may be old enough for social security, but they could still kick your butt.
Ben Rothstein/Twentieth Century Fox via AP
Old man Logan is passing the time driving a limousine, and occasionally checking in on his old mentor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), a nonagenarian who still has the power to read and control others’ minds, but is starting to lose his grip on his own; dementia has never looked so terrifying. Charles is also being tended to by a mutant named Caliban, played with a wonderfully sympathetic streak by Stephen Merchant.
The rest of the X-Men are absent, possibly dead or in hiding. Remember when the near future used to mean something, like New York as a prison city, Replicants, or a world without oil? Well, in this version of 2029, about all we can look forward to is self-driving transport trucks, the extinction of tigers and no new mutants; something in our high-fructose corn syrup diet, apparently.
Everything else is pretty much the same, although it doesn’t seem to have been washed in 12 years. It’s an extremely gritty future.
Logan’s attempts to keep a low profile are thwarted when a mysterious woman approaches him with a child named Laura (Dafne Keen), who is on the run from evil, well-armed men and needs his help. What’s a superhero to do?
Ben Rothstein/Twentieth Century Fox via AP
He’d like to do nothing – nothing with a side of scotch is his standard response to things – but Laura gets foisted on him, and then the men with the guns show up, and all heck breaks lose. This is where the film earns its adults-only rating, with a traumatizing battle in which Laura proves she can be just as deadly as Wolverine.
At the very least, you will never again consider using the phrase “fights like a girl” in a dismissive way. At most, you may need counselling. It is a fight scene like no other.
And Logan is a superhero movie like no other.
There’s more than a little of the western genre in its blood – no surprise when you recall that director and co-writer James Mangold made the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma, as well as The Wolverine. (To forestall any doubt, we also get a scene of the characters watching the classic Shane from 1953.)
And Jackman’s admitted weariness at playing Wolverine – at 48, it’s becoming harder to sell the mutant’s eternal youth – dovetails nicely with the character’s own disillusionment. About the only thing that keeps him from just giving up is the ferocity of the black-hats, including Boyd Holbrook as the bounty hunter Pierce, and Richard E. Grant as a droll evil scientist.
Faced with these unstoppable objects on the one side, and the immovably intense (and mute!) Laura on the other, Logan grits his teeth and does what has to be done. You may even find yourself gritting along with him.
