Logan Review

When you play Go Fish, you ask for a card. If your opponent doesn't have it, you have to 'go fish,' pulling a card from the deck. When I was a kid, there was always a certain excessive joy that accompanied drawing the card I asked for when I went fish. I would hold it up for all to see, proving my amazing luck, grinning like the fool that I now know myself to be. Then without trying to seem too prideful, I'd pair the jack of clubs with his diamond adorned brother and set them neatly next to my other collected trophies.

This is, near as I can figure, how I feel about James Mangold's Logan, rated R, 137 minutes.

I, like many of you, have seen more than my fair share of superhero movies in the last ... what? Twenty years? That sounds right. Two decades of CGI wizardry and phenomenal cosmic powers. There have been some excellent entries in the genre over that span of time. Just beneath the X-Men umbrella, X-Men, X2, and Days of Future Past were terrific flicks. That still leaves five movies - over half the current cannon - that were real clankers.

The Michael Keaton/Tim Burton Batmen were a breath of fresh air: strange and dark and visually new. I'm of the opinion that all of the caped crusaders since have sucked. Hard. Heath Ledger was an amazing Joker but that does not redeem the thoroughly shitty and incomprehensible Dark Knight trilogy.

I have seen a variety of swirling CGI menaces bent on the destruction of all life, or all human life, or all mutant life for various vague and terrifying reasons too many times. The first time I saw the realistic depiction of an entire city being leveled, I was amazed and mortified. But now that is the centerpiece to every movie. The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Ninja Turtles, Superman, Suicide Squad, X-Men, and - to a lesser extent - Batman. Did I miss anyone? Probably.

Q: How many times can THE ENTIRE RACE/PLANET/UNIVERSE face down imminent destruction?

A: Every. Fucking. Time.

Congratulations! You've made the killing of a half million people boring and cliche.

What Logan does that has been conspicuously absent from all these movies is it tells a human story. A story of small consequences; individual needs, fears, and desires. It is violent and profane and real. The movie leans heavily on the performances of Hugh Jackman, the always excellent Sir Patrick Stewart and newcomer Dafne Keene who perfectly fills the role of Logan's violent, confused, and lonely progeny.

In Logan, the stakes are not so very high. There is one life on the line and it is not an important one. Not important in the sense that the sun will go out if she is caught and killed, anyway. We have our heroes: Logan and Professor X, both dying.

Professor X seems to be suffering from dementia, which has turned his supermind into an unpredictable and dangerous weapon. The effects of his illness give us the best action set piece - not featuring Keanu Reeves - that I can recall. I'm not forgetting Quicksilver's antics in the kitchen.

In this movie, The Wolverine doesn't quite heal, needs reading glasses, and is reduced to driving a limo to save money for a boat to escape in. Logan's muscle tone is gone. His moobies jiggle when he runs. He's never not drunk.

There is a nice sidebar to the story, which works the comic books in as exaggerated and sanitized stories of the exploits a now extinct race of mutants. Logan is not sanitized - nor should it be. Another part of the power of the storytelling is that it neither ignores nor revels in its violence. It doesn't flinch from the violence and the price of it. There are no bloodless stabbings here. No dark bullet holes quickly healed. There are bloody amputations and violent murders. There is torture. There is regret. And when the innocent die here, we are made to look at them.

What there isn't is a good guy. Logan is no good guy. He's Han Solo, when Han Shot First. There are bad guys, but killing bad guys doesn't make you a good guy, does it?

Logan is imperfect, much like its characters. And similarly endearing. It takes its time telling its story, like many excellent films, and is rewarding and surprising while eschewing the BIG TWIST for somewhat familiar and predictable territory - if you think outside the superhero box.

Like pulling the jack of clubs, I got exactly what I wanted and I was unreasonably happy about it. This is easily a 3.5 star movie on a 4 star scale. 5 out of 4 on the superhero scale.