Logan Review

By: James Graves

“Spoiler Alert”
Logan is a perfect ending to a not so perfect trilogy for Wolverine. What’s even more impressive is that it’s not just the perfect Swan Song for our clawed hero but also a high quality film. Director James Mangold does a fantastic job in nearly every aspect of film. The western setting works extremely well with the story being told here. Logan takes place in a world without mutants. There are no more X-men and no mutants are being born. The reason for both is explained and makes sense for this timeline. The film begins with Wolverine working as a chauffeur which is a far cry from any position we’ve seen him in thus far. This film portrays Wolverine as a world-weary and extremely washed up version of himself, as the film makes it known from the very beginning that he’s well past his prime. He drinks a ton which to be fair isn’t really a brand new aspect of his character, but the film does a good job letting the audience know that this is different. Wolverine is clearly drinking to try to mask or run away from something. The pace of the film starts off a little slow as Mangold takes his time world building, and developing the characters before the action kicks in. As it is no secret that Charles Xavier makes a cameo appearance in Logan it was nice to see that his character is different from all the previous iterations of Professor X that we’ve seen in films before. Patrick Stewart does a fantastic job as portraying this version of his character as an old, senile, and often times angry Xavier. The R rating also helped with that as it is great seeing Logan and Xavier getting into explicit arguments with each other reminiscent of scenes from Grumpy Old Men. Explicit arguments aside the R-rating also helped out with the action.

Long time Wolverine fans will be excited to finally see him be able to go full berserker mode and will enjoy seeing Wolverine be as savage as we all know that he could and should be. The action is glorious and does not shy away from any bodily damage you can imagine Adamantium claws can do to the human body. The film also does a great job portraying X-23. I was nervous that they were not going to directly adapt her origin and was actually glad that they kept it as close to her comic book counterpart as they could. When you finally see her unleashed fans will be surprised and glad that they stayed true to her origin that truly defines her as the successor of Wolverine and the Weapon-X Program. Now the Weapon-X program does not get mentioned in this movie they do have a great replacement in its place and without spoiling too much of the movie it does make sense and fit the movie better overall. Once everything is set up I feel the movie flows perfectly from one scene to the next as we see Logan, Xavier, and X-23 bonds grow as their journey continues. Logan never feels rushed and the reveals to some of the movies questions come at the perfect time. The Cinematography also deserves a shout out as I was thoroughly impressed with the films climatic action scene, easily one of the best uses of a continuous shot I’ve ever seen.

The writing is extremely strong and the way the movie is paced you can honestly feel the connection grow between X-23 and Logan from scene to scene. By the time the film reaches the last twenty minutes, if you are not fully invested in this believable relationship I would have questions about which part of the movie you fell asleep or walked out on? To wrap up Logan is an extremely well written, directed, shot, and acted Film. It takes you on an emotional Journey as well. Many of my friends I spoke with told me they felt the same range of emotions I did when watching Logan. You will laugh, you will get angry, you will cheer, and for the more sensitive moviegoers it may even get you to shed a tear or two. Logan is worth every bit of money it rakes in at the Box Office and at the moment hands down not only one of if not the best movie released this year. It also makes a strong argument for being the best movie based on a comic book to be released.