Review: "Logan"

Director: James Mangold

Runtime: 135 minutes

In Hugh Jackman’s 17-year tenure as Wolverine we have had two Batmans, two Supermans, two Hulks, two James Bonds (the most recent of whom is soon to be done), and now three Spider-Mans. Even Jackman’s co-leads in the X-Men films like Patrick Stewart and Halle Berry have seen other actors play their younger selves. In that span, superhero movies dug themselves out of their graves and burst forth as key priority for the major studios. Before X-Men‘s release in 2000, a sequel (let alone a franchise) was anything but assured. Now, we have interlocking stories being planned and scheduled through the start of the next decade. With all of those seismic shifts, the end of Jackman’s time in his star-making role is momentous in its own way. The character will always outlive the actor, even if that actor is how most envision said character.

The very good news, however, is that this swan song for the Australian actor corrects the mistakes of past X-Men films, while also building on the promise of a previous installment. After the enjoyable but run-of-the-mill X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), the next film in the franchise was a prequel centered on Wolverine’s origins. It came out in 2009, and it was a bit of a mess. Redemption followed with 2013, when James Mangold (Walk the Line, the 2007 3:10 to Yuma remake) helmed The Wolverine, chronicling the clawed mutants exploits in Japan. But The Wolverine‘s success came with an asterisk: it was a big step in the right direction in many way….until the third act, which went heavy on cartoony effects at odds with what came before.

Yet ultimately The Wolverine did enough to pave the way for Logan, so we owe it that much. With Mangold back in the director’s chair, and the freedom of an R-rating, the third time really is the charm for the cigar-chomping anti-hero. It is a Wolverine story that has its own look, its own feel, and despite references to events in other movies, enough narrative confidence to stand on its own.

Opening in 2029, we first meet Logan sleeping in his car, drunk out of his mind. His hair is greying, and his body, though still imposing, looks worn. The character used to be able to heal from nearly all injuries, and now he looks like a man on his last legs. In a world where most mutants have been eradicated (and no new ones have been born), the likes of Logan and Prof. X (Patrick Stewart, also bowing out of the franchise) are relics. They live modest lives, hidden away from general society. No coordinated costumes, no fancy lairs, no custom jets.

Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman

And then along comes a One Last Job opportunity, which our hero reluctantly takes just for the money. At first. The task is to escort a young, “gifted” girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) from the Texas/Mexico up to North Dakota. Naturally, there are obstacles, including a scheming scientist (Richard E. Grant) and a mercenary with a robotic arm (Gone Girl‘s Boyd Holbrook). At its heart, Logan is a Western-tinged road movie, albeit one with a stray few sci-fi elements.

But its also a movie that generally takes as much care with its interpersonal scenes as it does with its carnage. The characters are often on the move, but it’s rare that Mangold’s storytelling feel rushed. This is heightened by the surprising plot structure, which builds to a major moment that could serve as an ending, only to launch immediately into that story’s sequel. But it doesn’t feel jumbled or inelegant. Mangold is in his element here, crafting a story that has its share of action (a vehicular chase is the standout of the first half), but isn’t afraid to throw in the occasional long stretch of quietude.

It’s easy to sneer at idea of a script being a valuable component of a superhero blockbuster, but a good deal of credit belongs to the foundation Mangold and his two co-writers set. Logan takes into account the past stories of the X-Men, while also demythologizing them. In the film’s world, a comic series about the mutants exists, and one key scene involves Logan telling Laura that most of what’s on those brightly-colored panels is bullshit.

But even if the mutant exploits have been exaggerated, they stem from a shred of truth, even if it’s a truth that Logan would rather avoid: he has gifts that he (and others) can use to help the defenseless. That rediscovery is crucial to the character’s development. It’s certainly been done before (perhaps one too many times), but in Logan the arc comes across as a genuine priority, rather than an obligation.

This is never more clear than when looking at the work from the cast. No one’s here to just fool around, pose, and collect a paycheck. The central trio of performances (Jackman, Stewart, Keen) are excellent and unexpectedly moving. For the two gentlemen who have been with these characters from the outset, it’s a chance to bid farewell to a role (and the audience that came with it) with conviction. Wolverine/Logan in his normal state can be one-note. But this figure, who shows actual signs of wear and tear, allows Jackman the chance to put some emotional weight behind the gruff exterior. That the villains are a bit pedestrian ends up not mattering much. The more frightening enemy is the ravages of time, making themselves felt on a character who spent over a century never fearing them. Who knows, maybe Cormac McCarthy ghost wrote a draft of the script.

Logan is undoubtedly striving to be something “adult” and “grounded,” and it succeeds because when it has a chance to go big, it subverts expectations and goes small. Even when Logan goes into full, R-rated berserker mode, it doesn’t last forever or totally save the day. This is a superhero movie with limitations and consequences (many of them involving dismemberment).

The violence and the special effects are there, but they are always in service of a story where violence continuously bequeaths violence, and takes no prisoners (including children) along the way. It is solemn, but with a few flickers of levity to prevent portentousness. There are references to cinematic influences both subtle and overt (at one point several characters watch Shane on TV), but the tributes have been assembled to tell a story that uses familiar settings and tropes to create a tale with its own identity.

Will Logan/Wolverine rise to fight another day, with another face? Almost certainly. With iconic characters like Superman or James Bond, certain faces stick with roles more than others. But new casting does allow for variations on how a noteworthy role is portrayed (contrast Connery’s suaveness with Daniel Craig’s Bourne-like grit) can reflect changes. Few, however, have played a character through so many stylistic evolutions and remained a constant. So, to the person tasked with filling the shoes with nearly 2 decades of work from Jackman, I can only say: good luck; you’ll need it.

Grade: B+/A-

Review: "The Wolverine"

Director: James Mangold
Runtime: 126 minutes

In an age when superheroes dominate the summer with all manner of spectacle, there is something shockingly intimate about James Mangold's The Wolverine. Where the last standalone Wolverine movie was a jumbled, incoherent  mess, this one latches onto a single story and dives in headfirst. The number of mutants and flashy superpowers is kept to a minimum, and there's hardly a cheesy costume in sight. It makes sense that the word X-Men was taken out of the title for this latest enterprise, which is barely a superhero or action movie at all. The Wolverine is not without its flaws, but its modest ambitions and aversion to city-leveling chaos do produce some pleasing character-driven moments along the way.

There is, actually, a city that gets destroyed in The Wolverine, but it's not part of any titanic battle between mutants. Rather, it's the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, where Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is being held as a POW at a Japanese military prison. As he hides from the nuclear blast, he ends up saving Japanese soldier Yashida (Ken Yamamura). Years later, an aging Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) calls on Logan via his aid Yukio (Rila Fukushima). Yet when Yukio finally finds the Wolverine, he's a shadow of himself. Still grappling with the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan has let himself go (as much as his enhanced musculature will let him, that is). He looks like an unkempt mountain man, and largely avoids society and mutant heroics at any cost. 

And it's with very little enthusiasm that Logan goes with Yukio to Japan. Once there, he gets cleaned up, and learns that the old Yashida may be able to cure him of his immortality, allowing him to finally grow old and die. Of course, sinister forces are at work, and soon Logan is sucked into familial and political drama involving Yashida's son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada) and granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto). Rather than get straight to the slicing, shooting, and stabbing, this film is content to take its time as it builds a pulpy mystery of a plot.

It takes roughly half an hour before the first action sequence arrives in the film, and it's not the most satisfying from a visual standpoint. Some of the editing is choppy and obscures the choreography. Yet even as I was somewhat frustrated by how some of the action was stitched together, I realized that I still found myself engaged with the material, and caring about what was going on. The script, from Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, has enough economical character work that you have reason to care about what's happening. 

More than any superhero film in recent years, The Wolverine is more content to act as a character piece. Each action sequence actually propels the narrative forward, and the scale is never magnified for the sake of creating unnecessary spectacle. Yes, the climactic showdown does take a cartoony left turn, but with the first two acts so effectively assembled, the sins of the last chunk of the story are largely forgivable. 

What the film lacks is simply any sort of stylistic stamp to heighten its positive qualities further. Darren Aronofsky was once attached to direct, way back in 2011. As many good things as Mangold brings to the table as a director, one can't help but wonder about the film that might have been under Aronofsky's guidance. To his credit, however, Mangold does make the film feel quite grounded, especially in the early stretches. He also pulls off a hugely enjoyable fight scene set atop a speeding bullet train, which has a certain disregard for physics yet feels completely in line with this more toned down aesthetic. 

And, as mentioned before, the film also keeps one engaged because of its dedication to character work. Jackman could easily play this role on autopilot by now, but the actor seems reinvigorated here. There are new shades of grief and exhaustion brought out by the plot, meaning that there's more for him to do than scowl and project sarcastic indifference. In fact, this film may contain the actor's best work as the X-Men's most famous member. The supporting Japanese cast are also quite enjoyable. Fukushima's red-haired Yukio has a fun dynamic with Wolverine that suggests a more hesitant Batman and Robin pairing. Even with Wolverine's existential gloom and doom, his partnership with Yukio creates some levity, and ensures that the film is never drowning in self-seriousness. Tao Okamato also handles her role quite well, and she's served quite nicely by the script. She may be in need of some rescuing at the end, but she's also been written as a smart and compassionate character who can throw a few punches and stabs when needed. 

Even Svetlana Khodchenkova (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) as slinky femme fatale Viper is a great deal of fun. The film may shortchange her by not giving an ounce of time to her motivation or background, but the actress' vamping is tempered so as not to distract. She's a sign of the lingering cartoonishness of the X-Men world, but compared to other characters in the franchise's cinematic universe, she feels quite tame. That's one of the most interesting things about The Wolverine: aside from Jackman, the women are the ones who really dominate the screen, which makes for a nice change of pace in a genre overrun with testosterone. 

With X-Men: Days of Future Past, set to hit theaters next summer, there's a little bit of tension sapped from The Wolverine, knowing that the famed mutant has to survive in some capacity. And as spectacle, The Wolverine has only one noteworthy sequence (and honestly, I wanted the bullet train bit to go on much longer). But through all of the ordinariness of the film there remains an immense appeal in Jackman's version of the character. Here, he comes off as a gruffer and less polished Bond figure, and that's quite a good thing. The Wolverine may not be the great standalone Wolverine film that it once could have been. Yet in a summer filled with exhausting visual excess, there is something ultimately winning about a movie that pushes superhero theatrics to the side in favor of moody character drama for as long as it can, before the demands of the summer blockbuster come crashing in. And even then, Mangold's film remains remarkably small and focused in ambition and execution. The film may not have enough to make itself essential viewing, but it's worth checking out if only because of how effortlessly it works against being just another superhero movie.

Grade: B-