Get off my lawn bub!

When I heard that James Mangold was doing another Wolverine movie, I remember thinking to myself “meh”. Not because I think he’s a bad director – I loved most of his earlier movies, right from Cop Land to Walk the Line, and 3:10 to Yuma. Heck, even Knight and Day has risen in my esteem since I watched it’s execrable remake, Bang Bang. 

But in my opinion, The Wolverine wasn’t all that. Of course having come towards the end of a jam-packed superhero season in 2013 probably didn’t help but I felt Mangold who is at his roots a “Western” genre director hadn’t exactly bridged the long shots and pauses which are a hallmark of a Western, with the awe and bombast of a big studio Superhero tentpole. This left the movie in a weird limbo where it was neither here nor there. The staging of the action setpieces left a lot to be desired as well.

Long story short, meh was what I was thinking while going in to the theater today in spite of the glowing reviews. I’m glad to be proven wrong here as this is the best Superhero movie of the year and may just end up being one of the best movies of the year. 
Logan sees our favorite Canadian (apart from Trudeau) inexplicably as an old man eking out a living as a limo driver in New Mexico in the year 2029. His healing capacity all but gone thanks to a case of Adamantium poisoning, he tries his best to stay away from trouble and takes care of a dementia-afflicted Professor X with the help of the albino tracker mutant Caliban South of the border. This is a dystopian future where mutants are all but extinct and a new mutant hasn’t emerged since 2004.

Hard as he tries to avoid it, trouble seeks Logan out in the form of a Mexican nurse, Gloria who seeks out the “Wolverine” to escort her “daughter” to a mythical mutant eden in Canada. By now you’d be forgiven for thinking “So far, so ‘Children of Men’ “. But the child, Laura turns out to be a Adamantium enhanced mutant herself with bad guys from Alkali Lake hot on her heels. 

This leads Logan on an epic road trip to escort Laura to the promised land which forms the rest of the narrative. 

In terms of feel, the movie feels closest to Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma with a relentless feel of doom closing in on our protagonists. Said doom is given human form by Boyd Holbrook who gives the movie what most Marvel movies lack – an engaging and grounded villain.

Logan is not a pleasant movie to watch, taking pride in its hard R rating with human beings getting sliced and diced in gory detail and a relentlessly depressing tone, but somehow Mangold manages to engage you in every frame. He has finally found that balance between the needs of a Western and a summer tentpole. He also manages to throw in a few homages to the all-time Western classic, Shane with several narrative parallels with the Alan Ladd epic. 

Hugh Jackman gives all he has got in what is sure to be one of the biggest upsets when he will inevitably not be nominated for an Oscar this year. He has brought the character of Wolverine to life in several movies over the past decade, but never has he been so vulnerable, conveying the dichotomy of the man who could never die, but who has been wanting to from the beginning. Patrick Stewart is poignant in his role of the mutant with a mind classified as a WMD by the government, and yet unable to control said mind anymore. But it’s the young Dafne Keen who walks away with some of the best scenes of the movie. She reminds you of the breakout role by Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass in all the best ways. 

This is appointment cinema of the best kind. Do not miss it.