When I left the cinema yesterday, my head was about ready to explode, after sitting through three films in a row, including Kong: Skull Island for a third time, and Logan, a film I've heard nothing but praise about, and that I finally got round to watching, in screen 10, the tiniest screen in the whole cinema, it was cute.
Logan started after the very amusing Deadpool short that I wasn't expecting to see, and then starts in a way I was kind of expecting, with some goons messing with his car, he then fucks them up with his claws, and it was bloody, really bloody, a few limbs came off. It's a great little intro that sets up both the film and the struggle of Logan, and the violence is beautiful. Let's get straight into it, Logan in this film is a very broken man, when he's not driving his limo, he's drinking, he tells people to fuck off constantly, and his coughing and hobbling would suggest a serious physical condition. This film's characters can be and usually are very depressing, as it's clear that most of them have just given up on life, and are now just waiting to die, Charles is the same, like Logan he's no longer a super hero, he's now just an old man, with a key difference that he now has seizures that can paralyze and kill anyone in his vicinity, as a result of a degenerative brain disease. While I liked these characters in what previous X-men films I've seen, these are not the same people, in those films they still had a bit of life in them, but in this film they're old and tired, and far from saving the world, they now hide near the border, with Logan and his albino friend helping Charles with his seizures, it's really depressing, and it makes these guys characters you can really feel for. The film's antagonist, Donald Pierce, has a great introduction scene, and is a great villain throughout the film, always on the heroes' tail, and doing some pretty evil stuff when he gets the chance, and while he does take a back seat in the film's final act, I thought he was a good villain. Then there's Laura, the mysterious girl, and someone who isn't like I was expecting, first of all I expected her to talk, yet for most of the film she seemingly only communicates in grunts and screams, the trailers give away that she's X-23, so like Logan, she has a metal skeleton and claws for tearing shit up, and her backstory is really creepy, and adds to Donald Pierce's villainy. What she wants though is clear, and the film shows it a few times, she wants a family, and she sees that in Logan and Charles, even if Logan wants nothing to do with it, it really really reminds me of The Last Of Us, and the relationship Joel and Ellie had for most of that game, but the similarities don't stop there. Like The Last Of Us, this is a story filled with suffering, the main hero of the story is an old man with nothing left in his life, having lost everything and everyone he cared about long ago, he reluctantly decides to help a child, who, over the course of the journey, begins to see him as a father figure that they never had, while the hero begins to find a new reason to live in the child, it's a story that worked in The Last Of Us, and it works here, and it's about as soul destroying, as death hangs over them and everyone they come across relentlessly.
Like I said in the beginning, this film is violent, really violent, when people get clawed there is blood, limbs and heads come off, it's viciously violent, but like the constant F-bombing, it doesn't feel like a gimmick; Logan is a bleak film, who's characters have lived very troubled lives, fucked is a good way of describing them, and the mercilessness of the violence is a reflection of that surrender of the characters' humanity. The blood is also very much like a fine seasoning on this film's action, with soldiers trying to kill Logan and Laura, and Logan and Laura tearing them to pieces, the film may end on a climactic action sequence, and have bursts of it throughout, but that's clearly not the point. This film reminds me of another thing, as well as The Last Of Us, another James Mangold film, funnily enough; 3:10 To Yuma. 3:10 To Yuma was a film I loved, and there's a lot of what I liked in that film in Logan, the whole thing has a very western vibe, with a journey through the deserts of the American border, through the rural farmland, and up into the forests and mountains, it's a very old west aesthetic, and that theme is reflected in the characters, like 3:10 To Yuma, the films centres on two characters who must get to a place, but while Yuma questions the humanity of its villain, Logan questions the humanity of its hero, and like Yuma again, Logan has a tragic ending. This film really hits you with the feels, on a regular basis, obviously I won't get into specifics on those feels, but they're there, and they're effective, and the final shot of the film is simultaneously one of the most touching and depressing things I've seen in a film for a long while. It being more like a western than a super hero film, it doesn't have any world ending stakes, it's a very personal story, and it doesn't have any massively destructive battles, like a lot of super hero films these days have, the action is very contained, in a nice way, and the film keeps its focus on the characters, it never cuts away, it knows what the point is, and it keeps itself focused and contained, and it makes the film all the more personal. It being a more contained film, the effects are also very minimal, and there's nothing unnecessary about it, it's perfect, again, the film stays it's course for the vast majority of its runtime, and it benefits from it. I like films that are all about the story, And Logan is one of those films, sure, it has action, it has CG, but that takes a back seat to the story and characters, and it's great.
All in All, Logan is a film I enjoyed while I was watching it, but that I like more and more the more I think about it; it's a film with great characters, an excellent western style journey, a very personal and emotionally heavy story, and some awesome action scenes sprinkled throughout. But even though you enjoy the action, that's not what sticks with you, what sticks with you is the bleak, depressing, emotional story, that knows what matters and knows how to make you hurt inside. Logan is a film I knew I would like, but I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I do, and it's definitely worth watching.
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