Logan

This review is NOT spoiler free.

Expectations: My expectations for this movie had been high ever since I saw the trailer set to Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt. The trailer was intense and gritty and perfectly in keeping with what I knew about Wolverine. I was expecting regret, pain, violence, and redemption. I got all of that, though more of some than others. I’m giving this a 7/10 overall.

Easter Eggs: I did not catch any real easter eggs in this movie.

Action: I knew going in that this was going to be a violent movie. It was, after all, one of two R rated features starring Marvel characters and helmed by the same man who directed The Wolverine, 3:10 to Yuma, and Identity. Additionally, said Marvel character is oft quoted as saying “I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do isn’t very nice.”

The movie starts with a drunken Wolverine literally taking apart some thugs trying to steal from him. Things stay slow for a bit after that, but once the main antagonists show up, the body count steadily goes up.

And the camera never flinches. We see dismemberments, impalings, decapitations, and eviscerations in grisly detail. Punches, kicks, flips, and throws accompany the slaughter. Gun shots abound. There’s an extended car chase sequence that ends with a limo kissing the front of a train. Characters are run down with trucks. There is at least one major explosion.

Then there’s the superpowered violence. People are immolated, torn apart by a telekinetic whirlwind of wood splinters, electrocuted, and frozen. One person has a car dropped on them with ferrokenesis (magnetism).

In fact there is so much violence it quickly becomes boring. You know how most every scene is going to play out: the bad guys shoot, then Logan or Laura shakes off the hits and tears them apart. By the time we get to the ending showdown, only the stakes involved are keeping the audience interested.

By contrast, the least bloody moments of violence are the most intense. When the albino Caliban is forced into the light as a form of torture to make him betray his friends. Professor X’s death wound, delivered from the shadows. The winner’s crown, though, goes to the scene of Professor X having his “episode” in the casino. It’s a fairly long sequence and between the sound effects and acting the intensity ramps slowly up all the way through. Watching Logan struggle to save his friend and AGAINST his friend at the same time was an amazing bit of storytelling.

Music: Unremarkable. I could not name a memorable moment of original music if my life depended on it.

Costumes/Visuals: I thought the cybernetic enhancements on some of the goons were okay, but both ubiquitous and underused: there to look cool and that’s about it. There really wasn’t much to the costumes. Normal people would wear those clothes. Caliban’s poncho get-up for moving about in the sunlight is the only memorable one.

Original Material: Having read Wolverine-centric comics only in passing, I’m not always sure what is original to the movie. Having said that, I have never seen anyone play around with the idea of a physical brain disease affecting control over mental powers like that.

Acting: The acting in this film was great. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart embody the characters and their history completely. Patrick Stewart makes the Professor’s growing senility tragic, humorous, and terrifying.  Boyd Holbrook is quietly menacing as Southern outlaw Pierce. Stephen Merchant puts in a solid comic relief performance as Caliban. The entire Munson family felt real; I’ve eaten with those people at a church picnic.

Screenplay: This is a story about a broken man. When the story begins, Logan hates himself. He’s isolated physically by living in an abandoned manufacturing plant and emotionally by his anger. He is dying, his regenerative capabilities sapped by the poison leeching into him from the very adamantium that sustained him for so long. He is resentful of Professor X for what happened in Westchester, for the burden of caring for him after, and he’s resentful of the rest of the X-Men who died and left him to carry on alone. He is depressed, waiting for death to take the pain away.

This a story about family, with Professor X cast as the aging grandfather, Logan as the dutiful, but hurt son, and Laura as the wayward grand-daughter. Every scene of Charles and Logan talking in a small space is poignant. Logan hasn’t turned his back on the Professor and Charles refuses, even past his dying breath, to let Logan live an existence without hope. Despite everything, they haven’t given up on each other.  In Laura, Logan sees a reflection of himself: isolated, angry, and hurt. In helping her to heal, he lets himself take on the role of a father, a role he doesn’t feel worthy of until it forces him to become worthy.

This is a story about re-learning what is important. Logan, and the writers, seem to understand that there are some things you do because they are right. Logan displays courage, loyalty, familial love and compassion. He does care for Professor X, even when it’s a fight, and refuses to abandon him. He has compassion on Laura and the other children, doing what he can to aid them. He fights for them, willingly subjecting himself to abuse for their sake. And at the end, he lays down his life for someone he loves.

There were a few scenes that were especially moving:

• Professor X in the hotel, as I stated in the Action section.
• Pretty much everything about the meal at the farmhouse.
• The dialogue leading up to Professor X’s death.
• When Logan takes a vial of restorative and, for one brief moment, he’s the Wolverine again.
• Logan waking up from his nightmares and having to explain that in them, he’s the monster.

Sadly, this is also a story with flaws. There are a couple of plot holes.

Firstly, when the villain, who’s actively hunting Laura, has to remind the mooks to “Stop shooting! She heals.” one has to think: Well, then why did you only bring guns? What about an electrified net? Tranquilizer darts? Flamethrower? Any of those would have upped the action in one way or another, and since you made her you should know not to bring ineffective weapons.

Secondly, why do Logan and company stop at the farmhouse? They know they are being pursued. Every moment they waste brings danger closer to them and to anyone around. That encounter sets up some of the best scenes in the movie, but it makes no sense.

Thirdly, as the guys over at Comic Book Education pointed out, why on earth does getting to Canada solve all the problems for the young mutants? Do you honestly think that people who have no compunction about murdering helpless surrogate mothers, young children, or a random farming family and who have the backing of at least part of the U.S. government will balk at invading Canada? If this isn’t the setup for a New Mutants movie, then I would have liked to have seen the terrifying and valiant cyborg-centaurs of the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police decimate the pursuers with portable rail guns to showcase said deterrence.

Aside from plot holes, content is definitely an issue worth considering.

I expected violence. It doesn’t offend my sensibilities too much, if it has a purpose to it. But did I really need to see claws shoved through heads repeatedly? I feel like they went for shock value with some of the gore and just overplayed their hand. We needed more feeling of danger to the characters and less blood actually on the ground.

I expected language. The title character is an angry, wounded, old (two hundred plus) ex-soldier. When he buries the closest thing he has to a father and as he tries to leave the graveside the truck won’t start? Yeah, I think screaming curses and hitting the heap of junk with a shovel is decidedly in character.  

Still, another reviewer clocked nearly fifty f-words, to say nothing of lesser profanities. Invective was invented to add emphasis. Overuse turns it into punctuation. Again, I feel like the writers overplayed their hand here simply because they knew they had an R rating to play in.

Additionally, there was one brief scene of completely gratuitous nudity.

Summary: Logan is at times a stirring portrayal of loyalty, hope, family, and redemption. The film values those things and reminds us not to forget them. But it mixes that with loads of gory violence and profanity. The core story is engaging, but I think there are missteps that get in the way of what could have been a mythic redemption tale.