Logan
My Grade: A
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The X-Men movie franchise is.... Well, it's a mess. The quality of the movies are all over the place, the continuity between them into a cohesive "universe" really doesn't exist and, well, they've probably had more bad or at the best "meh" movies than they've had "good" movies/
Logan sits in neither category, it is a category entirely in itself as an excellent X-Men movie and really more than that it works as a damn-good regular movie, saving for the comic-book aspects of it.
There's no CGI villains, no world-ending device shooting a beam of light into the sky, and no quipy lines between characters to get a chuckle in, as good as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is they're mostly just doing crowd-pleasing pretty-looking action movies but they've never gotten very deep. Logan gets deep. You need not necessarily have seen any of the other X-Men movies in order to watch this one, but you may need to have some idea of the "universe" it takes place in: namely what "Mutants" are and who Charles Xavier and Logan are and what their abilities are having just that basic bit of knowledge is all that is needed the movie doesn't tie into the other X-Men movies in any meaningful way, cursorily shrugging them off an implying them as being adaptations of "in-universe" comic book adaptations.
The year is 2029 and it would seem all of mutant-kind had died off, either the genetic mutation causing it all was a fluke or governmental powers successfully weeded out of the population; most of the X-Men were killed off by an aging Charles Xavier who frequently has violent seizures that causes his telepathic brain to attack nearby humans and mutants. The Mutant formerly known as Wolverine, Logan, takes care of Xavier in a parcel of land he lives on south of the border, keep Prof. X in a collapsed water tower which helps to contain the seizure's effects when he has them, and Logan works to keep X medicated so he's more-or-less easy to deal with,controls the seizures, and keeps him coherent and lucid; senility has taken a strong hold otherwise on the nonagenarian. Logan works as a limo driver and lives with an albino mutant, Caliban.
One day, one of Logan's fares pleads with him to take her and her daughter to a mutant sanctuary that supposedly exists in Canada, but Logan is dubious and unwilling but quickly finds himself forced into helping when government contractors come looking for the daughter intending to capture her as she's an experiment that's gotten loose. The daughter, Laura (or X-23), is mutant very much like Logan, she has a quick healing factor and claws that've been surgically coated with the indestructible metal adamanitum . (In her case she has two claws in her arms/fists and one claw each foot) Nevertheless when the mother dies Logan finds himself forced to care for the girl and get her to safety.
At this point in the continuity of the movies Logan would be nearly 200 years old and his age is taken a toll as well as the adamantium that covers his entire skeleton has been slowly poisoning him for 50 years. his joints are stiff, he moves and walks like an arthritic old man and his healing factor is so weakened he actually shows scars and suffers from his injuries, he is a broken man longing for his release but seems to find new hope and the young girl he's tasked with caring for.
The movie doesn't exactly have a lot of surprises and twists in it but there's some interesting things that pop-up over the course of the movie. If there's one weak point it's that our main villains are kind of just there, but it's okay because the movie low-stakes. The movie is more driven by the characters as we follow Logan, Lara, and Professor-X as they make their journey from Texas to Canada and the hurdles they come across along the way, the world they live in isn't exactly apocalyptic or even dystopian but it feels like one that's teetering on that edge. Society is more-or-less getting by.
When the movie's creation was first announced it was said to be based off the "Old Man Logan" graphic novel, but the two share very little in common besides being centered around an aging Wolverine and needing to take a long trip with an old companion; but in the graphic novel the world is very post-apocalyptic (following a massive war that killed most or all superheroes) and Logan's trip is more out of personal necessity and soon personal revenge, he's also a "pacifist" that hasn't used his claws in a long time. This movie has very little of those elements beyond "an older Wolverine."
The performances in the movie by Hugh Jackman (Wolverine/Logan) and Patrick Stewart (Professor-X) are great performances out of both of these men, they're giving us their A-Material and it's easy to buy Logan as broken man longing for his death and dying Professor-X still trying to hold on to life. Also turning in a great performance is Dafne Keen who plays Laura/X-23, she doesn't have a whole lot of lines but the girl delivers a lot in her performance from her facial expressions, walk and just general attitude. She plays the role like a feral child, as this take on X-23 very much is; but she plays that feral child with good emotion you feel for her when you see her struggle with her feelings and you fear her when she goes into her mini-little Berserker Mode.
Which brings me to: The violence.
Holy hell is this movie violent! And I loved every moment of it, the use of the claws by Wolverine and X-23 is painful and gruesome, it's everything we've wanted to see Wolverine do ever since these movies began 17 years ago. We see the blood, the decapitations, the severed limbs and feel the slice of indestructible blades slashing through flesh. It's very much on par with John Wick 2, but I'd probably argue a bit more violent since we're talking about slashing and knives verses bullet wounds.
It's a good movie. Well acted, well scored, well directed and it manages to have some heart and soul to it as the characters move on their journey. The reviews on it haven't been over-hyping it, this isn't just a good "comic book movie" it's a good movie.
