Review #898: Logan (2017)

Title: Logan
Year: 2017
Director: James Mangold
Country: US
Language: English

For an analysis of Logan we must first look at Deadpool, the first 20th Century Fox superhero film with an R rating. Despite many executives concerns about how a restricted rating would affect performance, Deadpool earned $783 million on its somewhat meager $58 million budget. This financial success inspired the Studio to make the already planned solo X-Men picture into a gritty visual feast. 

In the near future, a weary Logan (Hugh Jackman) cares for an ailing Professor X (Patrick Stewart) somewhere on the Mexican border. However, Logan's attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are upended when a young mutant arrives, pursued by dark forces.

If you've seen James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgement Day then you'll have a good idea for how the story develops and you'll be able to predict the ending within the first ten minutes. This isn't bad however; you could do worse than using the (arguably) best action movie in the history of cinema as inspiration. Director James Mangold fuses many genres together - road movie, post-apocalyptic action, superhero yarn and Western- to create a world that feels like a mix of  Fallout and Unforgiven.

Logan finds our hero in a sorry state. With a grizzled beard, graying mane, and a weathered physique Jackman returns as what is reported to be his final role of a character who, in this film, is one of the last of his kind. Jackman's performance is memorable, as is Patrick Stewart's. Their acting is helped by great writing, which sets a tone of bittersweet fatalism and Western mythology. Cinematographer John Mathieson shoots in orange, sun-bleached washes, while the location shooting looks far more natural than the Green screen CGI-fests that the X-Men films are normally shot in. 

It's a shame that Fox's X-Men Franchise doesn't have any solid continuity, as Logan would probably have had more meaning if we had a solid understanding of Logan and Xavier's past. Regardless this picture is impressive, perhaps the best "superhero" film (can it be classified as "superhero"?) that has ever been made. I thoroughly enjoyed it.