Nailed it: In bloody good Logan, Jackman takes what is supposed to be his final turn as ripper Wolverine

If ever you need to create more pathos for a superhero character, all you have to do is have him suffer the worst and most inexorable of all human maladies: aging. As pioneered by Frank Miller in his seminal Dark Knight series, making heroes old, beaten down, questioning themselves, and finding their once formidable powers greatly reduced, is a quick way to totally humanize them, and in so doing, put them in real peril against their ever-present adversaries.

In James Mangold's Logan, based (very loosely) on the brilliant graphic novel, Old Man Logan, by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, the year is 2029 and the former Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, in what is supposedly his last time flashing his adamantium claws) is now a common schnook known as James Howlett. He drives a limo, sports a raggedy beard, limps with a hitched gait, and sucks down booze like Bogart on a bender ("What a disappointment you are," hisses one character at the pitifully reduced Logan).

He's also hiding his old mentor, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), south of the border, in a house-size, rusted-out storage container. When we first see Xavier, now a feeble nonagenarian, babbling nonsense inside his bunkerlike dwelling, the film hits its most piteous moment. It turns out, however, that Xavier's mental difficulties are largely due to the various strong medications Logan and Xavier's caretaker, Caliban (Stephen Merchant), feed him continuously in order to stop his frequent seizures, episodes that send damaging psychic shock waves all around him. We are to understand that Xavier has developed some form of serious brain disease, an affliction that somehow caused the death and suffering of thousands of fellow mutants, including his own, beloved X-Men (this being a huge change from the novel, which had Wolverine himself inadvertently being the culprit).

Still, Xavier is lucid enough to detect the presence of a mutant who turns out to be the young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen), a seemingly mute kid who likes bouncing a ball, reading comics, and brandishing her own set of hand-and-foot claws, which she uses to savagely tear into anyone who attempts to threaten her. Eventually, Logan and Xavier take her in, promising to take her to some place known as "Eden," somewhere in North Dakota, where other mutants are said to live and prosper. On their heels are paramilitary troops sent by the evil Transigen organization, which created Laura and many other children with mutant powers of their own with the idea of turning them into super-soldiers and selling them to the highest bidder. Led by the nefarious Dr. Rice (Richard E. Grant), and tracked by the fantastically annoying Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), a brassy mercenary with a bionic hand and an utter lack of conscience, the convoy of dark SUVs tirelessly pursues the trio all the way into the upper Midwest.

As it happens, the single most compelling element of the film, of which there are several in competition, is watching Jackman playing the aged, bedraggled Logan, lumbering around with his limp, coughing into bloody rags and needing a lot of sleep -- the film is filled with scenes of him just waking up from one trauma or another. The first time Jackman, then a relatively unknown actor, played Wolverine was in 2000, when he was 32. Now nearly 50, the effect of seeing him over the years playing the same character is a bit like watching Richard Linklater's Boyhood, only with a savage, claw-wielding malcontent in place of a dreamy kid. There is a dark vibe in the film of heightened regret, where things have gone too far to put back in any kind of order. Logan and the professor have a vague plan to eventually save enough money to buy a small sailing boat and spend the rest of their days alone on the high seas, away from people and supervillains and anyone else who might trouble their shattered lives any further, but like Murtaugh's endlessly hoped for retirement in the Lethal Weapon films, you get the sense that their dream will always be just beyond their actual means.

Laura's entrance, then, provides them with some kind of purpose and quest, a final roundup, as it were, to try and leave the world having done at least as much good as they could muster. After working together for years, Jackman and Stewart have developed a powerful chemistry which gets played up to heightened effect as they banter and argue and cajole each other in continuing exasperation. At one point, Logan is forced to refer to Xavier as his father, and you realize it's not terribly far from the truth.

Those two are more than well-established, but the filmmakers also manage to find a perfect fit for the diminutive terror known as Laura. Keen is equally adept selling the silent but sensitive young girl and the bestial, bloodthirsty mutant (and don't think for one second the producers don't know what they're doing by passing this particular torch: replacing the iconic Jackman version of Wolverine with his physical opposite is a maneuver straight out of the Marvel comics rule book). Watching the two of them tearing into a squadron of commandos in the film's thrilling climax is rousing precisely because of their bloody symbiosis.

Do note the emphasis on "bloody." With the runaway success of the R-rated Deadpool last year, Fox has now cried havoc and let go the claws of gore: Within the film's opening three minutes, we have our first decapitation. Wolvie has always been something of a savage character, but in this film, you see the damage those claws can do in gushing red Technicolor. That, and some high-level epithets fill out the R-based checklist. You might want to think twice about taking the wee ones to see their favorite superhero, lest they come out of the theater shaking and traumatized by what they witness.

Mangold, a director whose filmography reaches impressive highs (Copland, Walk the Line) and horrific lows (Knight and Day, The Wolverine), has found an impressive field to mine with this production, playing off the thrust of Millar's source material while finding a fitting story to end Jackman's run. There will doubtlessly be other superhero movies to follow this sort of tragic trajectory, but they won't have the luxury of utilizing an actor we've been watching for nearly two decades in the role, finally closing it out his way.

MovieStyle on 03/03/2017