20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox



The X-Men movies are often pyrotechnic affairs, full of flashy CGI and casts of thousands. But then Deadpool changed everything, with its loner snarkface anti-hero who isn't interested in Saving The World. Logan feels like a movie that learned the best lessons from Deadpool: keep it small, keep it real, and keep it focused on lots and lots of stabbing. The result is not just the only Wolverine movie that's worth seeing (which—we know that's a low bar); Logan is also a brilliant standalone entry in the ever-evolving cinematic world of the X-Men.

Light spoilers ahead.

Set in 2029, Logan takes place in a trashed future America where a heavily guarded wall divides the US from Mexico. No new mutants have been born in at least a decade, thanks to mad scientist Dr. Rice (a delightfully hammy Richard E. Grant), who has spiked the world's energy drinks with anti-mutant GMO corn syrup. Logan is working as a limo driver in a series of no-name cities north of the wall, sleeping in his car, and slowly losing his healing abilities. He's broken down, his knuckles constantly leaking pus and his confident stride hobbled by a limp. All his money goes to keeping Professor X (Patrick Stewart) safe in the husk of an old factory in Mexico, far from anyone who could be affected by the terrible consequences of Charles' neurological problems, which look like early stage ALS or Alzheimer's.

The mood is grim, and Hugh Jackman sells Logan's anguish as both physical and mental. Though he's never been a joiner, he clearly misses living in a world where mutants were a growing force. Now he's like an old jalopy, surpassed by a new generation of cyborg super soldiers with robotic arms and drug-amped strength. The film's big bad is one such enhanced soldier, Pierce (played with bland menace by Boyd Holbrook), the creation of Dr. Rice. There's something oddly tragic about the diversity of strange mutant powers being replaced by cookie-cutter cyborg killers.

With Magneto out of the picture, the central conflict for mutantkind is no longer whether the X-Men should rule humans or integrate into their society. Instead, it's a struggle between freedom and life as one of Dr. Rice's experiments. There's no hope of laying waste to cities or becoming heroes. All the remaining mutants have is a slim chance of making it over the border into Canada, where safe haven awaits them.

Based loosely on some of the themes from Mark Millar's Old Man Logan comics, Logan casts its hero as a tarnished cowboy, scarred and dying, looking for sweet release from a world that has fully rejected him. But then something unexpected happens. Charles makes contact with a new mutant, a girl named Laura (the growling, defiant Dafne Keen), desperately in need of rescuing from Dr. Rice. With the help of a brave nurse, Laura and a few other children have escaped from a Mexican facility where Dr. Rice was breeding mutants using DNA stolen from various X-Men.

Though Logan and Laura develop a bond, Logan avoids most of the usual sappy clichés that could come with this development. There are touching moments between Laura and Logan, but they mostly involve stabbing the crap out of bad guys, smashing up cars, and passing out in piles of bloody bandages. Laura holds her own with Logan, even when they're up against armored self-driving trucks and Pierce's cyborg soldiers.

As I said earlier, what makes this movie great is that the stakes are not grandiose. No turbo mutant from ancient Egypt is trying to build the great pyramids with his mind. Instead, Logan deals with human-scale questions about whether Wolverine will ever find meaning in his hollow, gore-soaked life. There are almost no mutant power scenes, other than Logan and Laura fighting. This movie isn't about showing off all the majestic, fantastical possibilities for a future human species. Instead, our biggest question is whether the mutants can escape Dr. Rice and cross the border to Canada. This isn't your parents' X-Men, full of wings and magic powers. It takes place in a screwed up new world of militarized borders and scientists who experiment on children without remorse. In this world, which feels uncomfortably like the real one, the best a mutant can hope for is the freedom to live outside a lab cage.

Overall, Logan's dark tone and desperate violence work well. This is a character study, and the only rough patches are when we deviate from Logan and Laura's journey. The bits with X-24—the mindless, rage-version of Wolverine—are unnecessary. He feels like an extraneous bad guy added for no good reason. And we could have used a little more world-building, just to give us a sense of how mutantkind fell so far in little over a decade. But those are minor complaints. Logan will get your adrenaline going and make you a little teary at times, too. You can skip the two previous Wolverine movies, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine, which are pretty much unmitigated garbage (sorry, superfans). At last, in Logan, we have a terrific story that shows us Logan's true self, along with his busted, battered heart.

Listing image by 20th Century Fox