The Last Hurrah
As per usual Spoliers abound.
Movie franchises are a big deal in the year 2017, Transformers, the MCU and DCEU are just three that have new films out later this year and regardless of how you feel about them at least you can argue that the stories running through one movie to the next are fairly linear and can be followed from point a to point z even if the actual content is complete horseshit (Transformers I'm looking at you).
Another franchise that has a movie out this year (right now in fact) is Fox's X-Men which in the form of Logan now has its 9th film up on the silver screen. Unlike the three example listed about however I think it's fair to say that the X-Men franchise is a bit of a story telling mess which to their credit the directors involved have tried to rectify as the franchise has gone on.
Trying to make sense of the various threads and retconning within the X-Men movie universe is a post unto itself and is not something I'm going to tackle here as the purpose of this post is to offer my feelings on Logan which is the 3rd Wolverine movie and the 9th time Hugh Jackman has donned the adamantium claws. Is it a standalone film or part of the wider narrative, that's certainly open to debate and even the cast and crew don't seem able to agree so lets just say for the sake of this review that Logan is out there on its own.
Set in the year 2029 (just for the record 6 years after the doomed future depicted in Days of Future Past) we find Logan down on his luck sleeping in the back of a limousine which is having its wheels jacked by a group of thugs. He gets out and tries to warn them off but they shoot him which of course he gets up from (a lot more slowly than we are used to seeing from everyones favourite mutant). They then beat him down which sends him into a rage ending with Wolverine going full bezerker and killing them in a variety of gruesome ways.
He next goes to a bathroom to change his clothes and to remove the bullets from his chest which takes a great deal of effort as his healing factor is clearly not what it was once, in fact his body is covered in scars which is more evidence that all is not well in the world of Wolverine.
After a couple of jobs we see Logan at a funeral where he is approached by a woman asking for his help, an invitation he declines in a not very polite manner. He then heads to a local hospital to collect some under the counter drugs and runs into Pierce, a ravager who is working for Transigen (more on them later) in trying to hunt down a woman and child who of course is the same woman who approached Logan for help earlier. Logan of course tells him where to go and heads home where we find he lives with an older Caliban (who we met the younger version of in X-Men Apocalypse) and an aged Professor X. The Professor is kept inside a huge metal container which is supposed to keep his mutant powers in check, why do they need to do this I hear you ask? Well The Professor has a degenerative brain disease which when combined with the most powerful mind in the world makes a dangerous cocktail. In fact Wolverine has to keep his old friend medicated as when he doesn't Charles has seizures which can be deadly for anyone in the immediate vicinity.
Via conversation we realise that Caliban has been helping Logan look after the Professor for a year after an incident at the old school in Westchester, that something is seriously wrong with Logan and that all mutants have been wiped out which is a shame after all the hard work Logan put in during the events of Days of Future Past. We also discover that Wolverine has an Adamantium bullet which he is toying with using to blow his brains out, I'm not sure this would actually work though as per the events that unfolded in X-Men Origins.
Another night brings more work for Logan and he ends up being offered $50,000 to take the lady and her daughter to a place called Eden which she believes will offer safety for the pair of them. Begrudgingly agreeing to take them Logan returns to pick them up the next day only to find the woman is dead and the girl seemingly missing. He heads home and tells Caliban and Charles that they need to leave although before he can finish that thought the girl is revealed to have stowed away in the trunk of his car and Charles informs the others that her name is Laura and she is a mutant who he has been communicating with telepathically although Wolverine does not believe this.
The Ravagers show up and Logan tries to leave with Charles (the Ravagers have already captured Caliban) but gets beaten down. The Ravagers then try to take Laura away but she is revealed to not only be a mutant but to have the same mutation as Logan in the form of Adamantium claws and a healing factor, both of which enable her to murder some fools (along with Logan) before the three of them make their escape.
The trio begin to head for Eden (as Wolverine had promised Lauras mum) and Logan and the Professor watch some video on the mums telephone which show that Laura is not a mutant born and bred but rather a laboratory experiment of Transigen who used mutant dna (Wolverines in this instance) to create their own army of mutants raised in the wombs of homeless Mexican women. Laura, or to give her her official name X23, is merely one of a multitude of test-tube children all of whom have been given different mutant abilities by the same company who are responsible for the eradication of the mutant race.
Unfortunately the children rebel and so Transigen begin putting them to sleep which leads to the woman claiming to be Lauras mum (she is actually a nurse at the facility) breaking as many of the kids out as she can but they all got seperated and so she wanted to take Laura to Eden hoping that the others will have made their way there. Whilst on a break however Logan discovers that Eden is actually part of a story in an X-Men comic that the nurse has read and he tries to convince Charles that it doesn't exist although the Professor convinces him to continue on their journey.
After another seizure incident which almost kills hundreds of people inside a casino and leads to Wolverine and Laura offing a few more Ravagers the three heroes (of sorts) end up spending the night at a farmhouse with a family which if history teaches us anything (again see X-Men Origins) is not going to end well. It of course goes horribly wrong when X24, a clone of Logan who is younger than the original Wolverine and is full of rage as per Logan when he first escaped from the Weapon X programme, shows up killing Professor X (who before dying remembers that it was one of his seizures that killed the X-Men) as well as the family who had taken our trio in. Wolverine battles X-24 and gets his ass kicked before leaving the clone for dead and leaving with Laura and Charles' body.
Logan and his 'daughter' bury Charles and Logan collapses as his deteriorating health gets worse. The pair argue and Logan agrees to take Laura to Eden to prove that it doesn't exist. They eventually reach their destination only to find the other kids are there and that they are all going to cross the border to escape the clutches of Transigen. By this point Wolverine is really not in a good way but the kids use some drugs from Transigen to improve his health to the point where he can get up and walk around although he is clearly not well. Logan awakes from a deep sleep to find the kids have left but he then spots that they are being hunted down by the Ravagers so he injects the entire bottle of Transigen drug to bring on a full on bezerker rage which he uses to murderise many more Ravagers alongside the mutant kids and he breaks his cardinal rule about using guns to kill Transigen chief madman Dr Rice. X24 shows up again and after another fierce fight he impales Logan on a tree stump before being killed via the Adamantium bullet that Laura uses to blow the evil clones brains out (again I'm unconvinced that this would work but the hint throughout the film is that it is the Adamantium in his body that is poisining Logan).
Logan then dies and Laura laments the death of her father before burying him and leaving for the border with the rest of her friends and that is where we fade to black.
So what did I think of Logan? Many people are saying that it is the greatest X-Men movie of all time but for my money it comes in 4th behind Days of future Past, X2 and the original X-Men. Thats not to say that it's a bad film per se but I don't think it's not without problems, the first of which became evident after only a handful of the opening minutes. Yes the more graphic violence is great and is the Wolverine level of aggression that we have all been clamouring for all these years but it is the language that bothers me and for this I blame Deadpool.
When Fox released Deadpool as an R rated movie in America (15 in the UK) it was done for all the right reasons and the level of violence and crudity was spot on for the character involved. Unfortunately it would appear that it has set something of a precedent if Logans R rating is anything to go by as whilst the violence is spot on the language seems a tad excessive as the film goes on. This is particularly true whenever an expletive comes come out of the mouth of Professor X as in my opinion it just feels a little off.
I was also not a fan of Stephen Merchant as Caliban but that is my own personal taste and I can see where others may well disagree with me and think that he was at least OK in the role if not great. Other than this I have a few minor gripes with plot points and continuity but when you're trying to conjure up a story that takes all of the previous X films into account I completely understand how you may miss the occasional detail.
Points that bothered me particularly-
Wolverines yellow costume in the comic books and on the boys doll at the end
How did Transigen wipe out mutantkind so easily. Surely the likes of the Brotherhood of Mutants and remaining X-Men would have fought back
The tired old evil clone plot device
Retreading the family that helps Logan being slaughtered that we have seen before
Some of these may have been answered and I may just have missed an important detail, it wouldn't be the first time and likely won't be the last.
Now for the good. Patrick Stewart is exceptional here as an elderly Professor X who has to deal with the idea of losing his mind which is the one thing that has defined him as a person and when he finally recalls what happened to the students he loved so dearly the inner turmoil he feels is beautifully portrayed. Hugh Jackman is as usual fantastic as Wolverine and you can see how it is maybe a little bittersweet for him to be finally hanging up the role that he has made his own over the years..
The standout performance for me however is Dafne Keen as X-23/Laura. Here is a young actress (only 11 years old) whos only previous experience is 7 episodes of a tv show called Refugees and yet she is phenomenal here. True she doesn't have to display much range when it comes to beheading bad guys but she plays both aggression and emotion terrifically and is one of a new generation of actors that I am looking forward to seeing grow and deliver terrific performances throughout their career (see the Stranger Things kids for more evidence that the future is bright).
So in closing I would score Logan 8 out of 10 which is better than the 7.5 I score X-Men Apocalypse but not at the same lofty heights as both Days of Future Past and Deadpool both of which I gave 9.5. Logan is a good film but it is not without it's issues but it is most defiantely worth you dipping into your pockets and paying to go see.
