Logan

A car rid­dled with bul­let holes and filled with mutants bar­rels towards a com­pound board­er fence decked out with razor wire. It’s being chased by burly dudes with facial tat­toos, heavy artillery and no lines. The dri­ver informs the pas­sen­gers, with an under­stand­able sense of urgency, that they should ready them­selves for impact. We antic­i­pate the super­fi­cial plea­sure of see­ing the lum­ber­ing vehi­cle smash through the wire and off into the desert, to free­dom. The bad­die hench­man stands there, shak­ing his head, pon­der­ing where it all went wrong.

In James Mangold’s Logan, the car has already tak­en a heavy pound­ing, When it makes con­tact with the fence, it’s cat­a­pult­ed back into the com­pound for some more dough­nut­ting and gun­fire dodg­ing. The heroes in the car don’t dis­play con­fu­sion at the fact that one of the most iron-clad moves in the entire action cin­e­ma play­book didn’t land for them. They grudg­ing­ly accept their sit­u­a­tion and bat­tle on regardless.

The film is built on these lit­tle bait-and-switch­es. Logan attempts to kill off the com­ic book movie not with one triple-pronged claw to the solar plexus, but inflict death by a thou­sand tiny cuts.

The suc­cess of the so-called ​“revi­sion­ist” com­ic book movie roll-out has allowed a movie like Logan the sol­id finan­cial under­pin­ning to exist. But where Dead­pool was ​‘reg­u­lar com­ic book movie with swears’, Ant-Man ​‘reg­u­lar com­ic book movie with LOLs’, and Doc­tor Strange ​‘reg­u­lar com­ic book movie with Til­da Swin­ton’, this one has can­tered even fur­ther off the reser­va­tion. It dares, appro­pri­ate­ly, to min­gle with the DNA.

Logan inverts the hack­neyed and crush­ing­ly famil­iar cre­ation myth tem­plate by team­ing up new blood with old, chart­ing the place where one cycle of vio­lence begins and the oth­er ends. While dis­cussing the forth­com­ing Spi­der-Man re-re-reboot, a col­league men­tioned that if he had to watch Uncle Ben get slot­ted one more time he was going to seri­ous­ly lose it. This sto­ry, on the late-life tra­vails of Hugh Jackman’s Wolver­ine, replays the Uncle Ben mur­der, but uses every tool in its arse­nal to make the con­cept of the pride­ful, noble demise fash­ion­able again.

It’s hard­ly what you’d call rev­o­lu­tion­ary, but it at least announces out its robust game­plan ear­ly on. Wolverine’s first line of dia­logue is ​“fuck”. Lat­er, watch­ing as Patrick Stewart’s nona­ge­nar­i­an men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Charles Xavier, pep­pers his meta­phys­i­cal procla­ma­tions with F‑bombs, you real­ly know something’s up. And as ear­ly trail­ers for the film have (sad­ly) revealed, this is where we get to see the gris­ly human real­i­ty of hav­ing your face per­fo­rat­ed on one of Wolvie’s adaman­tium bone-claws.

There are no invis­i­ble edits or care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed cheats where­by the kills occur just out­side the frame. There’s no craven attempt made to secure a kid­die-friend­ly rat­ing. And yet, this is absolute­ly a film that 12 year olds would (and should) absolute­ly kill to see.

As is ham­mered home a lit­tle too force­ful­ly, Man­gold has cho­sen not to water him­self at the min­er­al-rich, eeri­ly clear fount of Mar­vel, but instead sup urgent­ly from the brown­ing dirt pud­dle of clas­sic-era westerns.

The team, which includes knee-high stow­away Lau­ra (the excel­lent, per­ma-scowl­ing Dafne Keen) who has some curi­ous blood-let­ting capa­bil­i­ties of her own, all take refuge in a casi­no-hotel in Okla­homa City while George Stevens’ tear­jerk­ing 1953 oater, Shane, plays out on the flat screen. It acts as handy the­mat­ic fore­shad­ow­ing, though its not entire­ly clear who will be the Christ-like sav­iour to rid the val­ley of the gun-tot­ing scourge (Richard E Grant as a bas­tard sci­en­tist, and Boyd Hol­brook as his mer­ce­nary wing­man, Donald).

Oth­er­wise, Logan plays like a lean, dust-parched B‑movie, that chan­nels its focus towards the fact that Wolver­ine is now a hob­bling mess, bundling down the home straight, dis­count read­ing glass­es propped inel­e­gant­ly on the end of his red nose, with the sweet release of death as his desired end game. And by ​“lean”, that doesn’t infer the film is in any kind of big hurry.

It’s more detailed and soul­ful than your con­ven­tion­al com­ic book block­buster, which obvi­ous­ly isn’t say­ing much. Yet there’s a sat­is­fy­ing core of self-loathing that infil­trates the film – as Wolver­ine increas­ing­ly despis­es what he has become, Man­gold directs the same fes­ter­ing ire towards the con­ven­tions of a tired genre.

It’s also packed with death and destruc­tion, though time has been tak­en to ensure the mur­ders don’t all hap­pen for the sake of emp­ty visu­al kicks. There’s gore, but it’s not a leery, screw­ball brand of vio­lence. There are no sick laughs. The vio­lence is swift and bru­tal. And the film is notice­ably bereft of cool kiss-off lines or meta­tex­u­al quips. It toys with the mutant mythol­o­gy by hav­ing the orig­i­nal com­ic books used as a lit­er­al ref­er­ence point, with Logan even dis­miss­ing the gaudi­ly inked pages as roman­ti­cised horseshit.

Man­gold doesn’t dis­pense with the lega­cy entire­ly, but he doesn’t use it for quick-fix fan ser­vice either. He tracks back to emo­tions more than events, and the fact that Wolver­ine has seen so many of his friends per­ish in extreme close-up is what pow­ers his own sui­ci­dal urges.

Jack­man clear­ly adores the char­ac­ter, and he embraces the chance to essen­tial­ly rein­vent the mut­ton-chopped slay­er for one final hur­rah. It’s strange to think that this might stand as one of his great­est per­for­mances, but so it goes. It has its sneaky lit­tle moves and con­ve­nient plot expe­di­ents, but you allow them because it’s oth­er­wise so com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing a seri­ous and guile­less­ly emo­tion­al front.

As long as the num­bers add up, it’s high­ly like­ly that this speed­ing, dilap­i­dat­ed jug­ger­naut might not quite make it though the fence into free­dom just yet, even if a bril­liant clos­ing shot sug­gests otherwise.