El Cid

El Cid; historical drama, USA / Italy, 1961; D: Anthony Mann, S: Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Herbert Lom, Raf Vallone, Genevieve Page, John Fraser

The Iberian Peninsula during Reconquista, 11th century. General Ben Yusuf from the Muslim Almoravid dynasty wants Al-Andalus to continue fighting and annexing the Christian cities. The Christian nobelman Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar and his army capture two emirs, al-Mu'tamin and al-Kadir, but lets them go if they promise not to attack Christians anymore, so he is given the title "El Cid". Because of that, El Cid is accused of treason and kills Count Gormaz in a duel, the father of his fiancée Chimene. When Ferdinand, the King of Castile, dies, his two sons Alfonso and Sancho fight for the crown, and Ben Yusuf assassinates Sancho to start a civil war. However, Alfonso is declared the King, but since El Cid suspected he killed Sancho, El Cid an Chimene are exiled. They are summoned again to lead an army during the Battle of Valencia, and they win. When Ben Yusuf's army counterattack, El Cid is wounded, but is tied to a horse to charge the next day against the Moors, thereby assuring victory over the Almoravids.

"El Cid" is an example of duality among monumental epic films: on the one hand, it dazzles with thousands of extras, spectacle, lavish production values and aesthetic locations of the Peniscola walls and beach; on the other hand, it feels strangely stiff, mechanical, has underwhelming, pale characters and seems as a schematic PowerPoint presentation by a chatbot. The director Anthony Mann directs the film conventionaly, yet the sole story cannot be that easily bereaved of its intruige since it is one of the rare movie depictions of Reconquista, an era lasting over 750 years, since modern politics rather avoid films showing Christian-Muslim conflicts. The title protagonist is shown as an idealized hero, always true to his mantra of being just and fair—when he encounters a group of soldiers on horses, El Cid has a determined exchange with them ("Will you give me your prisoner, or must I take him?" - "There are 13 of us. And you're alone!" - "What you do is against God's law. Were you 13 times 13, I would not be alone!"), before he engages in a battle and defeats them all. After being exiled with Chimene, El Cid leaves a cottage and is surprised to find a hundred soldiers outside, waiting for him, and they have this exchange: "I am in exile!" - "Not you. We're all in exile!" It is difficult to find such a thoroughly honorable character in modern movies. Despite its running time of three hours, "El Cid" feels strangely as if it is told in ellipses and is missing some pieces of the bigger picture, since we don't find out more about neither El Cid nor Chimene, though their relationship is more complex than expected, especially after he inadvertently kills her father in a duel. The battle sequences, especially in the finale of the fights along the coastline of the walled city depictitng Valencia, are short and effective, as well as stylistically elegant due to being framed by such architecture, though they are no match for the choreography of future historical films, whereas the narrator's final line is strong ("And thus El Cid rode out of the gates of history... into legend"), and thus "El Cid" feels fluid and smooth even today.

Grade:++

Man of the Year

Man of the Year; political satire / drama, USA, 2006; D: Barry Levinson, S: Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, Lewis Black, David Alpay, Jeff Goldblum, Rick Roberts, Tina Fey

As a joke, comedian Tom Dobbs decides to run for the President of the United States. Even though he starts off giving serious speeches about social and economic problems, his staff, including Jack and Eddie, encourage him to do a comedy speech during a debate with Republican and Democratic candidates on a TV debate, and indeed, the audience loves it. Unexpectedly, Tom is elected President. However, a computer glitch from the Delacroy counting company declared Tom the winner by error, and the Delacroy employee Eleanor Green tries to contact Tom about it. Delacroy CEO tries to hush up the error by drugging Eleanor and ruining her reputation. In the end, Tom goes to Saturday Night Live and declares that he was elected by an error, and thus hands over his Presidency before he was even inaugurated.

The third and final cooperation between director Barry Levinson and comedian Robin Williams, "Man of the Year" is a movie that starts off very good, but then a third into its runtime, it seems as if it becomes scared of its own story, and then abandons it without exploring all the rich potentials of it. The opening act shows a daring and unusual plot concept of a comedian, Tom Dobbs, running for the President of the United States, which would prove very similar to the later events involving Volodymyr Zelenskyy depicted in the comedy TV show "Servant of the People". Williams still has some great examples of one-liners and jokes in this first third, whether he is arguing with his campaign advisor ("It's like the comic who gets to play Carnegie Hall but shows up and plays the violin. It's not what they go to see." - "How many analogies do you have left?" - "How many does it take to make my point?"), through his comical rant during the TV debate ("You don't want an amendment to the Constitution on burning the flag. Make it out of asbestos!"), or when he senses that all the reporters are now looking for dirt from his past, so he goes full rampage and gives them all the details possible, open and direct ("When I was 21, I went to a prostitute and I was so bad, she had to give me a refund"). Bizarrely and perplexingly, after Tom is elected President some 40 minutes into the film, "Man of the Year" suddenly stops and wants to avoid the obvious continuation of the concept. And that is a cop-out. The rest of the movie switches to suddenly follow a crime subplot of an election employee Eleanor (Laura Linney) being a whistleblower because the company error in a recount made Tom appear to win the election, when that was not the case. The jokes suddenly disappear, and the movie betrays itself. Tom ultimately doesn't spend a day as a President, which is disappointing and incomplete. It is comparable to what "Mrs. Doubtfire" would have looked like if Williams' character would have disguised himself as a woman, did a test with his brother, and then decided give up on this plan and just spend the rest of the film in normal clothes as himself trying to win his kids back.

Grade:++

Weekend in Taipei

Weekend in Taipei; action, France / Taiwan, 2024; D: George Huang, S: Luke Evans, Gwei Lun-mei, Sung Kang, Wyatt Yang, Tuo Tsung-hua

Taipei. American Inspector John travels to the city on his vacation to try to secure evidence against the drug smuggler Kwang, who feigns to be a respectful businessman. Unexpectedly, he gets all the evidence he needs when Kwang's 12-year old son Raymond who sends Kwang's accounting ledger book to John's hotel room, in the form of his protest against Kwang's fishing of dolphins. Raymond and his mother Joey team up with John, and Joey reveals Raymond is actually John's child, since John had a relationship with her when he was the last time in Taipei. Kwang's criminals chase after the trio, trying to erase any evidence, but in the end, John is able to beat up and arrest Kwang. He then renews his relationship with Joey.

Even though many expected just a routine action flick, George Huang's "Weekend in Taipei" turned out to be a pleasant surprise: fast and dynamic pace with a lot of chase sequences were to be predicted, but humor, likeable characters and numerous original ideas were a welcomed bonus that enriched the movie. Co-written by Luc Besson, "Weekend in Taipei" has two outstanding, delicious moments in the opening act that ignite the interest: 1) dressed in the style of "Breakfast at Tiffany's", Joey goes to a car salesman and demands to drive a Ferrari, takes her high heels and gloves off, and then uses that opportunity to drive so fast through the streets that the salesman is left traumatized. 2) fighting with criminals in a kitchen, undercover agent John suddenly tells them to stop for a minute because he needs a break (!), so he goes to the fridge to drink a bottle of water. In the middle of the great choreography of this fight, one henchman is pourred with cooking oil and set on fire, so he runs off and climbs into the nearby fish aquarium to jump into the water and extinguish the fire. This causes a great creative lift-off, but the rest of the film is rather standard and routine, never managing to reach that playful opening act. The comical moments help expand the character interactions, as Joey, Raymond and John form a new family while they fight and unite against the bad guy. Joey is played by the excellent actress Gwei Lun-mei who delivers a brilliant performance, whereas Taipei is a really photogenic city, especially in this gorgeous cinematography. The storyline tends to become stale in the final third, and the ending feels incomplete, yet the movie is overall a really good fun.

Grade:++

Fauda (Season 1)

Fauda; spy thriller series, Israel, 2015; D: Assaf Bernstein, S: Lior Raz, Hisham Sulliman, Shadi Mar'i, Laëtitia Eïdo, Tzachi Halevy

Israel. Doron would love to just enjoy his vineyard peacefully, but he is summoned to return back to the Israeli special secret unit Mista'arvim to help locate and eliminate Abu Ahmad, known as The Panther, a Hamas terrorist who was presumed dead, but is still alive. Doron and his team, led by Moreno, disguise themselves as Palestinians and speak Arabic to travel to the West Bank, mostly around Ramallah. The unit discovers Abu Ahmad as a guest in his brother's wedding, and in the ensuing chaos wounds him, but he is able to escape. Doron presents himself as a Palestinian to try to go on a date with Dr. Shirin who treats Abu Ahmad's injuries. While on a mission, Israeli agent Boaz is captured, but dies when the planned exchange for a Sheikh with the unit goes wrong. Doron enlists himself as a suicide bomber to reach Abu Ahmad, and thus the Israeli unit is able to track the terrorist unit that plans a terrorist attack with sarin in a synagogue. Walid, disillusioned with the way of the group, shoots and kills Abu Ahmad in his office.

Based allegedly on his own experiences, screenwriter and actor Lior Raz rightfully concluded that "Fauda" will attract a lot of international appeal based on the ever actual interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and indeed, the first season is engaging and slowly absorbing while presenting it all through the framing of a spy thriller. The action and chase sequences are routine, whereas most of the dialogues are disappointingly bland and standard, playing out like some soap opera (especially the subplot involving Doron's wife Gali cheating on him with his colleague Naor), yet the majority of the virtues are created through small observations and clever insights in the specific details of this milieu. For instance, in order to find the terrorist Abu Ahmad, the Israeli agents have to covertly inflitrate the West Bank, and thus spend a long time watching the mirror as they disguise themselves as Arab Palestinians (they apply darker skin make up; they hide tattoos on the skin using make up; an Israeli woman places a hijab over her head and later has glasses with a camera inside as she goes to a Palestinian public bath locker room). "Fauda" doesn't idealize nor presents black-and-white solutions, showing that some of Doron's unit's own conduct causes even more damage and problems, such as the sequence where Doron and his two men are revealed to be Israeli agents at a Palestinian wedding, the guests surround them, so Doron makes the disastrous decision to take the bride as a hostage / living shield, the groom inevitably wants to intervene and gets shot. Later on, to avenge her husband's death, the bride accepts to perpetrate a terrorist act in a Israeli night bar, reaching the full circle of violence. An interesting dialogue by Abu Ahmad is found in episode 1.11 where he reveals his plan to perpetrate a sarin terrorist attack which would force Israel to retaliate with "such war crimes that other Muslim countries will be forced to intervene, and will then destroy the Zionist entity". The suspense and the fight between various factions trying to outsmart each other are the virtues of this series, which is luckily concise enough to captivate the audiences.

Grade:+++

Avanti Popolo

Avanti Popolo; war drama / road movie, Israel, 1986; D: Rafi Bukai, S: Salim Dau, Suhel Haddad, Tuvia Gelber, Danny Segev

The last day of the Six-Day War. After they buried a dead companion and killed another one for wanting to continue to fight, two Egyptian soldiers, Haled and Gassan, walk by foot across the Sinai desert to reach the Suez canal. Along their way, they pass by a deserted Egyptian outpost and reach a UN Jeep with a dead UN observer in it, where they find whiskey. A British reporter arrives with Israeli soldiers, picks up Haled and Gassan in his van, but immediately throws them out after Gassan throws up on him. Haled is able to turn on the UN Jeep, but it gets stuck in the sand. The two get captured by Israeli soldiers who bring them along, but the next morning, the Israelis accidentaly walk into a minefield and die. Another group of Israeli soldiers shows up and starts chasing Haled and Gassan. Haled is shot first, while Gassan is shot at the Suez canal, as Egyptian soldiers exchange fire with Israeli soldiers.

A rare movie about the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, "Avanti Popolo" is unusal since it actually depicts the story shown from the perspective of two Egyptian soldiers, Haled and Gassan, and not from the Israeli perspective. The Egyptian soldiers were thus given a humane dimension, almost as three-dimensional characters. The episodic story is problematic, though, as it is structured as a road movie where they walk by foot across Sinai, and thus feels somewhat disjointed and random overall. Filmed in aesthetic locations with several good frames of sand dunes and moutains in the Sinai desert, "Avanti Popolo" is still more inspired cinematography-wise than narrative-wise, as it lacks a tighter narrative with a goal. One of the best episodes is when the Egyptian soldiers arrive at a Jeep with a dead UN observer, and Gassan, a struggling actor, finally opens up as the viewers discover a lot about him, whether it is his comment about the Swedish UN observer ("Even dead they look better than us!") or the irony of his first theater role ("I play a Jew! Shylock from the Merchant of Venice!"). Surprisingly, Israeli soldiers are depicted in worse light than the Egyptian protagonists, especially in the dark ending where a IDF unit just spots a wounded Israeli soldier and immediately starts shooting and chasing after Haled and Gassan, not even trying to listen to them that they were just helping the wounded IDF soldier who stumbled upon a minefield. The movie created the feeling of randomness and chaos of war, yet it still feels it needed a better and different storyframing than the one we got.

Grade:++

Saint Clara

Saint Clara; fantasy comedy, Israel, 1996; D: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan, S: Lucy Dubinchik, Halil Elohev, Yigal Naor, Johnny Peterson

Golda Meir school. Principal Tissona and his assistant Zvi are shocked that the entire class recieved a perfect 100% score at a test, and thus interogate students about this. They are unaware this is the work of student Clara (13) who is clairvoyant and can see the future. Students Tikel (13) and Rozy (13) are both in love with Clara, and thus argue. Clara proves her powers when she gives Tikel's dad a forecast of the lottery numbers, who thinks he won 4 million shekels, yet Clara's dad gave the info about the number to 300 other people from the factory, which greatly diminished the reward. Allegedly, Clara will lose her powers if she falls in love. She predicts an earthquake, which causes people to flee from the city. Alone in the streets, Tikel and Clara go see a movie in the theater, and as they kiss an earthquake strikes.

The feature length debut film by director Ari Folman (excellent "Waltz with Bashir"), who co-directed it with Ori Sivan, fantasy tween comedy "Saint Clara" is one of those movies that set-up a great premise, but then don't know what to do with it and get lost in meandering, isolated episodes which lead nowhere, yet is saved by an endearingly quirky sense for humor and stylish tone. The main problem is that the clairvoyant title heroine Clara (very good Lucy Dubinchik) is bizarrely underused, to the point that she is absent for almost half of the film and thus almost feels like a supporting character, and the narrative has no clear goal that leads it. However, there are numerous funny scenes, ideas and characters that keep "Saint Clara" consistently fresh. For instance, the dialogue between the students observing a seismographic station ("When there's an earthquake, the scientists are really happy. The seismograph draws Marilyn Monroe naked, and they determine the size of the quake by the size of her tits"); the way one of Clara's family members shows how to cut a cake into seven equal pieces (he uses a knife to cut it into eight slices, then takes one and throws it away out of the frame by saying: "Stalin", leaving only seven pieces); students riding on a bronze statue of Golda Meir by dragging it across the school hall; or the surreal scene of the students sitting on a couch in the middle of a swamp. The characters are so sympathetic that one wishes this was an even better film with a tighter storyline, yet it is still fun to watch it, as it symbolically depicts the tribulations of growing up.

Grade:++

Pelle the Conqueror

Pelle Erobreren; drama, Denmark / Sweden, 1987; D: Bille August, S: Pelle Hvenegaard, Max von Sydow, Erik Paaske, Björn Granath, Astrid Villaume

Denmark, 19th century. The 12-year old Pelle and his old father Lasse Karlsson arrive via a ship as immigrants from a Swedish town in search for a job. They are picked up at the harbor by a foreman and hired to work at a farm led by the rich Kongstrup. The two take care of the cows and the harvest, while Pelle is bullied in school by other kids for not knowing Danish that well and for being a "cuckoo's egg" because his father has a relationship with Mrs. Olsen, whose husband, a sailor, is presumed dead because he is missing for a year. When Olsen's husband returns one winter, Lasse's plans are again ruined. A worker, Erik, is bullied by the foreman and rebels, but is hit in the head by a stone attached to the well pump. Erik promises Pelle to escape with him to America in two years, but since Erik is injured, he is fired from the farm. Lasse doesn't want to leave the farm, and thus Pelle has to leave into the unknown all by himself.

The critically recognized adaptation of the first volume of Martin Andersen Nexø's eponymous novel, Bille August's "Pelle the Conqueror" is an ambitious, intelligent, cultured, elevated and patient film depiction of poverty, work exploitation and growing up of a Swedish immigrant boy working in a farm in Denmark, serving both as a chronicle of that era as well as a broader depiction of some universal traits in every generation (the confusion of growing up; kids bullying other kids in school; yearning for a better life and future). Defying the typical three-act structure imposed by Hollywood, August instead builds the film as a 'slice-of-life' story composed out of episodes, yet they all work as a cohesive set of bricks that build this storyline, and a lot of praise should be given to its two main actors, the young newcomer Pelle Hvenegaard as the title hero, and especially the veteran Max von Sydow as the hapless father Lasse who ultimately "gives up" and resentfully accepts his "life trap" as a man without a wife, without a good job, without a home, without any future: the actor gives this character more dignity than others would have. Von Sydow's role reminds of the similar one he played in the drama "The Emigrants" 16 years ago.

There are several interesting moments and dialogues which make "Pelle" engaging throughout, despite its running time of 2.5 hours: for instance, the comments regarding the rich farm owner ("He fathered children to every woman except his wife") or Lasse scorning the sick Pelle who jumped into the ice sea ("If he had drowned, I would have beaten him up senseless!"); or the illustration of the cheapskate foreman who prepares only an ordinary meal for a holiday for the over dozen workers—one worker, Erik, protests ("You could have bought us pork at least for Christmas!"), is expelled out by the foreman, but Erik then takes a harmonica and defiantly starts playing the song "Silent Night" in the snow, much to the amusement of the workers. It is not surprising that some film critics deciphered socialist themes in the story about the plight of these poor farmers. Everything in "Pelle" is done right, yet it somehow feels as if something is missing, as if it is too schematic. The story is conventionally great, the dialogues are conventionally great, the direction is conventionally great—but one wishes that some outburst of unconventional greatness would have happened in the film which would have made it genuinely greater.

Grade:+++

Enemies, A Love Story

Enemies, A Love Story; drama, USA, 1989; D: Paul Mazursky, S: Ron Silver, Lena Olin, Anjelica Huston, Margaret Sophie Stein, Alan King

New York City, 1 9 4 9. Jewish immigrant Herman is stuck in a puzzling situation, in an equidistant affair between three women: he cannot break up with his Polish wife Yadwiga out of guilt since she hid him in a barn and saved him during the Holocaust; he cannot break up with his mistress Masha since she says she is pregnant with him; and on top of all, his long lost wife Tamara, whom he thought died during World War II, shows up again, since she survived being shot at. He cannot say this to any one of the three women, and thus marries Masha. When Herman finds out Masha was lying and she was not pregnant, he decides to leave her. She committs suicide with pills because she wants to be burried together with her deceased mother. Herman disappears, Yadwiga gives birth to his daughter and raises her together with Tamara.

"Micki + Maude + Masha" would be a fitting description of "Enemies, A Love Story", a humorous drama about a love rectangle revolving around a man having an affair not with two, but with three women simultaneously. The director and screenwriter Paul Mazursky crafts this unusual story at first as a "collateral" consequence of the Holocaust, since all of their relationships are an indirect result of it (Herman cannot break up with Polish woman Yadwiga out of guilt since she saved him by hiding him in her barn during World War II, whereas he is shocked to find out his long lost wife Tamara (excellent Anjelica Huston), presumed dead, actually survived the war, and thus he is now in a "marital limbo"), but later on he plays it as "straight" as any given "normal" situation that can happen to any man if he is dishonest and full of betrayal, torn between more love interests. It is disappointing that after this concept is set up, the storyline fails to differentiate into something more, settling only for the standard, conventional and predictable route of Herman constantly going from one woman to another, never knowing what to do, always stalling. Sadly, the writing is hardly more imaginative or inspired than what described at face value, and the dialogue is strangely thin for Mazursky. Some of the best moments are when Mazursky invests some spark into these characters and gives them something unusual to do: for instance, upon hearing about Herman having affairs with two other women, his "presumed dead" wife Tamara actually offers to help him and be his "manager", whereas Herman and Masha have this one inspired dialogue when he finds out she lied to keep him ("You swore to me on a holy oath!" - "I swore falsely"). With a running time of 120 minutes, "Enemies" is too overstretched and features too much empty walk, not quite managing to fill out this tantalizing concept to the fullest.

Grade:++

Housekeeping

Housekeeping; comedy / drama, USA, 1987; D: Bill Forsyth, S: Christine Lahti, Sara Walker, Andrea Burchill, Anne Pitoniak

A small town in the mountains. Little girls Ruth and Lucille are dropped off at a house of the grandmother by their mother who then drives off with her car into the sea, committing suicide. A decade later, Ruth and Lucille are teenagers raised by their grandmother, but then their eccentric aunt Sylvie shows up to take care of them. Local people are puzzled by her unusual behavior, as she sometimes takes a nap on a bench in the park or collects a house full of newspapers. After an argument with Ruth, Lucille leaves the house to live with someone else. Ruth and Sylvie remain living alone in the house. One night, when the Sheriff insists that Ruth should live with him and his wife, Sylvie sets her house on fire and flees with Ruth across the bridge with the railway tracks, aiming to take any train out of there.

Bill Forsyth's first US movie, "Housekeeping" is a peculiar comedy-drama that cannot quite be pinned down as to what it is, which is a reason many didn't understand it during its premiere. Using a minimalist style, with quiet, low-key scenes that depict the slow pace and uneventful mentality of this desolate mountain town, Forsyth crafts an unassuming little film that contemplates about the difference between a settled-planned existence and an aimless, elusive existence embodied in aunt Sylvie (excellent Christine Lahti): one cannot quite pin her down because she represents the random life itself, which cannot quite be pinned down or directed regardless of all the people who pretend otherwise. The opening act, where the mother drops off her daughters at the grandmother's house, has clever dialogues (one of the girls narrates: "Lucille would remember one thing, and I another, until we pieced together the whole journey. We tried so hard that we ended up not knowing what we really remembered from what we only imagined."), and in the next sequence the mother is seen sitting on the rooftop of her car, stuck in the mud in the countryside. Three boys show up and help her push the car out of the mud. She gives them her purse, as one of the boys hesitates to take it, not understanding the gesture. The mother then drivess off from the cliff with her car into the sea, to her death. She could not take the randomness of life, but her sister Sylvia can.

The main plot revolving around the two girls, Ruth and Lucille, now as teenagers, being taken care by their aunt Sylvie, is full of little funny, comical moments: Sylvie randomly stands in front of a house to watch the TV program through a window; has quirky lines ("I met a really nice lady at the station. She was traveling all the way through from South Dakota to Portland to see her relative hanged.") and is totally unscathed by a flood in the house, with the water reaching 10 inches, as she prepares breakfast on the table in the kitchen. Forsyth also has some impressive shots, especially the one where the townspeople walk on the frozen lake in the winter, looking at a hole in the middle left after a train fell down from the bridge. The first half of the movie is somehow fascinating and hypnotic, but in the second half it loses itself in too much empty walk and overstretched running time where nothing much happens, and after Lucille leaves the house and only Ruth and Sylvie are left in the last third, the whole movie becomes even more uneventful. The whole second half becomes less funny and less interesting, until the viewers simply lose interest in the overlong running time of two hours that cannot sustain such a light set of scenes. Better editing and more concrete ideas would have improved this second half. Just like the unusual final scene, "Housekeeping" is a peculiar meditation on life without a guideline, yet it has enough good moments to engage.

Grade:++

Logan

Logan; fantasy action / road movie, USA, 2017; D: James Mangold, S: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant

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 dialogue is 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:++