Logan
Dir James Mangold, US 2017 On UK release
After last year’s extremely disappointing Apocalypse (where to start?), it’s encouraging to see that Fox appear to have some fresh ideas for their X-properties: the recent TV co-production deal with Marvel has yielded the mind-bendingly good Legion and, in cinemas, Logan proves to be the best X-Men film in 15 years, and that by a comfortable distance.
James Mangold, who helmed the nearly excellent The Wolverine back in 2013, here delivers what promises to be – after the actor’s public statement that he is, after 17 years, hanging up his adamantium claws – Hugh Jackman’s final outing as the scrappiest of mutants. And it proves to be a fine and unexpectedly moving send-off.
At some point in the not-toodistant future we find a crumpled, weary, booze-soaked Logan scraping a living as a limo driver on the Mexican border; his healing factor is waning and he’s caring for a nonagenarian Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who is slipping into dementia and unable to control his powers. In a world where most mutants are dead and no new ones are being born, they hide out in an old water tower with Stephen Merchant’s goggle-eyed albino Caliban (I expected to dislike him, but he’s rather good), playing out scenarios of familial frustration reminiscent of Beckett by way of Steptoe and Son: it’s darkly funny, but there are hints of a terrible tragedy that has driven them to this current dead end. The status quo is only upset when the surprise appearance of a young mutant named Laura (Dafne Keen) seeking protection from the sinister, quasi-official forces pursuing her. Reluctantly, Logan is forced to come out of retirement and confront his own past.
If it sounds a lot like a late-period Western, then you won’t be surprised to find echoes of The Shootist and Unforgiven, while the classic Shane becomes an explicit point of reference as the film develops; Mangold’s previous experience as writer/ director of the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line pays off in the soundtrack too. This is also a road movie of sorts – a mutant Alice in the Cities? – in which the unlikely ‘family’ of Charles, Logan and Laura set off on a journey north to the Canadian border in search of a fabled ‘Eden’ where mutants can supposedly dwell in safety. The bearded Logan acts as an increasingly bloody and beleaguered Moses figure on the trek to this ‘promised land’, and Jackman imbues the role with sufficient world-weary nuance to make this easily his finest assumption of a role he has played across nine films and nearly two decades. Stewart nearly steals the show, though, in a poignant performance (F-bombs and all!) that must rank as one of his very best. The young Dafne Keen is also splendid as the virtually feral Laura, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her turn up again in the part. Richard E Grant is, well, Richard E Grant, but Boyd Holbrook ( Narcos) as Pierce makes for a superbly swaggering villain, full of arrogant menace.
With its dusty landscapes, melancholy tone and themes of ageing, mortality and family ties, Logan is a very different kind of superhero movie that stands out in an increasingly crowded field, and its obsession with borders and migrations, safe havens and dangerous crossings marks it out as strangely prescient and powerfully resonant for our times. In the end, it’s not the furious, bloody violence that makes this R-rated entry in the X-Men canon feel special – satisfying though it is to see Jackman finally go full beserker – but the quieter, character-driven moments that linger in the memory after the credits roll on this valedictory chapter in the Wolverine saga.