Logan (R16)
137 mins Logan is another outing in the evergrowing franchise of X-Men movies, but not one of those feel-good, funtimes X-Men movies where the whole gang use their talents to battle evil, exchange wry barbs and participate in awesome group fight scenes.
Rather, it’s one of those darker, more serious, properly-acted X-Men movies where the titular hero (who in a different mood would have answered happily to Wolverine) goes on the run from mutant-harvesters with a frail Charles Xavier and a mysteriously mute child in tow. Things get deep, feelings get personal, and the depth and feels are punctuated by very graphic slashings and decapitations when Logan gets mad. And to this end, Logan is rather good.
Fans eagerly watching the trailer won’t consider it a spoiler to explain Logan tells the story of a future Wolverine: where he’s a boozing limo driver trying to forget, or at least ignore, his super-heroic infamy, and is closed to the idea of having to protect a new generation of mutants.
Hugh Jackman reprises the role he first took on an incredible 17 years ago. It almost beggars belief that they can keep on making them, but Marvel’s filmmakers have been blessed with talented writers who have run us up and down the timeline from the troupe’s earliest days in 1962 (in X-Men: First Class) to its current tribulations and sideways into various characters’ origin stories.
Logan technically follows on from X-Men: Apocalypse because the series now boasts two alternate timelines, but it’s easiest just to say that Logan envisages a future where mutant life looks very bleak indeed. Professor Xavier (good old Patrick Stewart, clearly relishing the opportunity to play a grandfatherly old fellow) lives in enforced isolation under the care of a strange Albino mutant-tracker Caliban, played, bizarrely but well, by British comedian Stephen Merchant.
Xavier’s special powers now cause more harm than good when inadvertently unleashed, so he lives largely drugged up. Meanwhile, Logan’s own fatigued maturity is portrayed through a slight limp, permanent scowl and lack of empathy for civilians – in fact, a seeming lack of care for anyone – which lends itself to the resulting ‘‘odd couple’’ moments that inevitably ensue as the former heroes go on the run.
It’s the interpersonal stuff across three generations of this pseudofamily which provides the beating heart of Logan, against the bleak, desert setting and a plot that bravely dispatches characters whom softer films might have let live.
Do bear in mind another thing that marks this out from the usual X-Mens is the jaw-dropping violence, and a pretty impressive sound design augments the gory experience.
But in softer moments, characters read about themselves in comic-books and covet floral sunglasses. So in the end, Logan is a very touching family story. Just not your usual family. – Sarah Watt