2 0 2 9. Mutant Logan "Wolverine" is wandering aimlessly through life in El Paso, Texas, taking care of his 90-year old mentor Charles Xavier in a secluded dome. A woman asks him for help, to transport the 11-year old mutant girl Laura to Eden, a sanctuary near the Canadian border, since they are persecuted by Reavers, a group of criminals led by Pierce and Dr. Rice. After the woman is killed, Logan, Laura and Xavier flee in a car towards north, and they discover that a corporation led a secret lab facility in Mexico City where they bred mutant children with special powers to be used as soldiers, but killed most of them, yet Laura is among those who escaped. Logan also discovers Laura is technically his daughter, since she was created from his DNA. Xavier is killed by X-24, Logan's clone controlled by Dr. Rice. Logan and Laura reach an outpost with other mutant kids, but when they are attacked by Reavers, Logan intervenes and saves the kids, but dies in the process.
"Deadpool 2" hyped up Hugh Jackman's last appearance as Wolverine in "Logan" (before he returned to the role in "Deadpool and Wolverine") to such an extent that the viewers will be a little bit restrained through a reality check when they actually see the movie in question—it is good, yet still below all the hype that surrounds it. James Mangold crafts the film as a road movie about family in a quest for survivial, with a bizarre blend of emotional drama and bloody violence to give it more intensity, and Jackman is indeed excellent in the title role, yet the narrative is not always inspired to the fullest. They made three errors: firstly, it was a mistake that the girl, Laura, doesn't speak all until 100 minutes into the film, because this inhibits and reduces her relationship with Logan, considering their father-daughter bond was supposed to be the center of the story. There are some mute reactions from her which somewhat convey these missing links, but overall she should have communicated with him already from the start. Even that one sequence where Laura talks with Logan in "Deadpool and Wolverine" has more lines between them than we got here in the entire movie.
Secondly, using the "RoboCop 2" theorem, it was misguided to have a child, the 11-year old Laura, perform several violent murders in the film, which looks freaky and ill-conceived. When the SWAT team-style Reavers go to get her in the hideout, she exits and throws a severed head of one of them on the ground, and then proceeds to use her Wolverine-style blades from her hands to stab and kill several other foes, screaming. Thirdly, it was unnecessary to have Logan's clone, X-24, appear in the story at all, since it is confusing and too fantastical, breaking the otherwise grounded plot based on gritty realism. The storyline is episodic, featuring at least one transparent ploy to have an excuse to exalt Logan as a self-sacrificing holy savior—the episode where a horse trailer is jolted away from the highway, the scared horses escape and are confused by the trucks driving fast pass them, yet Logan helps the family round them up again, so the family invites him, Xavier and Laura for dinner and sleepover at their house, only, of course, to be killed by the bad guys later on who followed them. However, this small segment has tow best lines in the movie—one is when Xavier talks about Logan ("I Wish I Could Say You Were A Good Pupil But The Words Would Choke Me"); the other when he talks to him before going to sleep ("You know, Logan, this is what life looks like. A home, people who love each other. Safe place. You should take a moment and feel it"). However, the dialogues are mostly bland and standard, when more finesse would have been welcomed, and less of violence used as some sort of art expression. The subplot involving a laboratory testing out mutant children reminds of "Elfen Lied", whereas the ending is touching and neatly ties it up with the finale from the classic "Shane" as a worthy conclusion to the Wolverine saga.
Grade:++
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