Wolverine winner

Logan

STARRING: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen

DIRECTOR: James Mangold 

Genre: Superhero 

Rating: 18

137 mins

After 17 years, we finally get the Wolverine we’ve been waiting for. Fans have been crying out for an 18-rated outing for the celebrated character ever since the brilliant Hugh Jackman donned the claws in 2000’s X-Men.

Wolverine has always used his claws, but they’ve always been a little ornamental: three per hand, harder than steel, sharper than diamond, but usually sheathed before they can do real damage.

When the gruffest, toughest mutant of them all does cut loose, it’s cleaner than it really would or should be. Blades go in, blood doesn’t come out, and it’s hard to buy into the supposed ferocity the character is trying to portray.

However, Logan is a different beast. Wolverine uses his ‘gift’ in a way that fans have always dreamed he might, the way the movies and certainly the cartoons and even the comics have never entirely allowed. There’s nothing clean about what Wolverine does with his claws this time around. His knuckle sandwiches leave stumps, stains, and a body count to make Rambo blush.

One year after Deadpool pushed the limits of extremity in an X-Men movie (and perhaps paved the way for this film to take its direction), Logan pushes them further. By the end of the opening scene, in which some very dumb carjackers mess with the wrong furry loner, you know why this third and supposedly final entry in the solo Wolverine franchise has been handed its rating. It went looking for one.

The language is blue (the very first line, spoken by our aged antihero himself, is something you’d never repeat in front of your grandma) and the violence is red, with limbs hacked off and faces skewered.

Logan is as brutal and bleak as any superhero movie in recent memory, but it’s also a comic-book adaptation that takes its characters and its themes seriously, that elevates the genre past spectacle and on to something resembling art, even poetry. It’s adult in more ways than one, and it’s an absolutely incredible movie.

Set in 2029, when mutants have all but become extinct, Logan presents a future America that’s closer to an apocalyptic dystopia than any deserted wasteland and ruined city offered in previous doom-filled mutant movies.

When not working as a limousine for snotty businessmen and giggly schoolgirls, our eponymous hero lays low in a junkyard just south of the border, where he looks after an elderly, ailing Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Xavier, now in his 90s, is losing his mind - a dementia that manifests itself through deadly, occasional mental shockwaves that paralyse everyone in proximity. Wolverine isn’t doing much better; poisoned by the Adamantium that coats his skeleton, he’s finally looking and feeling close to his age, that trusty healing factor slowing by the day.

Retired from the do-gooder superhero business, Logan ends up serving as reluctant guardian, mentor, and protector to Laura (Dafne Keen), a young mutant on the run from a heavily armed task force. Writers have been placing Wolverine into this kind of ‘lone wolf and cub’ relationship for years, but Laura is more of a miniature version of her father figure … claws and temper and all.

Criss-crossing the Southwest en route to a mutant-sheltering haven that may or may not even exist, the two tag-team waves of pursuing cavalry in some of the bloodiest superhero combat ever portrayed on the silver screen.

The film has a very Western feel to it, which makes it so engaging. Wolverine is the lone bladeslinger, an outlaw making his way through the dusty plains looking eerily like the Clint Eastwood of yesteryear.

The idea of being a loner is quite literal too. At a time when both Marvel and DC are investing in their multi-year crossover plans and shared universes, director James Mangold appreciates the merits of standalone storytelling without having to open and close strands everywhere. Logan leaves its franchise history almost completely implied, resisting callbacks and cameos at every turn to focus on the here and now.

In the modern world, a plethora of F-bombs and extreme violence are not enough to sell a film anymore, so it’s a good job that the performances are outstanding. The grizzled gravity of Jackman’s performance is unmatched. Similar to Daniel Craig’s James Bond, it’s hard to believe that there was a time when his casting was met with scepticism. He’s joined the elite ranks of the select few to truly make the role their own. Jackman is Wolverine.

Logan, in general, boasts some of the best acting of its genre, from Stewart’s wounding turn as a wizened Xavier, haunted by his own regrets, to the mature-past-her-years emotion of Keen.

Ultimately, what’s special about Logan is that it manages to deliver the visceral goods, all the hardcore Wolverine action its fans could desire, while still functioning as a surprisingly thoughtful, even poignant drama. Yes, Wolverine finally goes berserk with those claws, but it may be the moments where he doesn’t that cut deepest.

An utterly fantastic experience.

Showing in: Cineco, Seef I, Saar, Al Jazira, Wadi Al Sail

Rating: 5/5