'Logan' a bloody, powerful end to 'Wolverine' franchise

The brutality of “Logan” announces itself in less than five minutes.

Before the opening credits can finish, the claw-wielding mutant formally known as the Wolverine is hacking limbs off a gaggle of odious car jackers.

Seeing so much blood spill in an “X-Men” movie is a shock to the system, even for Wolverine fans who have been waiting to see the popular character unleash his full ferocity. Grim violence runs throughout the entirety of “Logan,” but it’s the soulfulness of its broken characters that makes the film something special.

Hugh Jackman, in his ninth and reportedly final outing as Logan/Wolverine, carries the 17 years he’s played the character into every small choice he brings to the film’s quieter moments. Logan’s life has been punctuated by loss and the suffering of those around him. He’s a broken hero begging for death, and death never seems to finish the job.

While it helps to have some familiarity with Jackman’s portrayal over the years, “Logan” largely functions as a standalone character study with more in common with westerns like “Unforgiven” than the effects-driven efforts in the franchise.

At the start of the film, set in a near future where mutants have either been killed or gone into hiding, Logan is driving a limousine and secretly caring for a dementia-inflicted Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). Something terrible has happened to the rest of the X-Men, and Xavier’s now-uncontrollable telepathic ability is considered by the government to be a weapon of mass destruction. Logan’s once extraordinary healing ability is failing him, and the impenetrable metal grafted onto his skeleton is slowly, finally killing him.

Both Xavier and Logan want a peaceful, solitary place to ride out their final days, but trouble arrives in the form of a young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen, in an incredible breakout performance), who has healing powers and claws just like Wolverine. When an army of cybernetically-enhanced soldiers come hunting for Laura, Xavier ropes Logan into protecting her.

From there, “Logan” is a contemplative road movie, with dashes of vicious fight scenes sprinkled between. It never loses focus on Logan’s relationship with his fellow travelers. Xavier is a father figure dying a slow, cruel death, and Laura is essentially Logan’s spawn — another mutant who physically heals but has no control over the horror and destruction that surrounds her existence.

So much of the Logan-Xavier dynamic is unspoken — they trade barbs and rarely share any sentiment with each other. It’s their quiet actions throughout the film that define their relationship, and it’s a testament to the film that it never veers into unnecessary sentimentality. The Logan-Laura dynamic plays out slowly, but where it leads makes a powerful impact on the film’s final minutes.

All three performances are superlative and essential to how well “Logan” plays even when plot mechanics grind the film to an occasional stop. Keen is as much of a standout as Jackman was in the first “X-Men” movie back in 2000. The performances by Stewart and Jackman, meanwhile, deserve to be remembered when next year’s Oscars finally roll around. Like Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” their performances transcend the genre roots.

Director/co-writer James Mangold, returning to the franchise after directing Jackman in 2013’s solid “The Wolverine,” crafts several unique and compelling fight sequences, all extremely bloody, and he finds ways to punctuate the grim storytelling with character-driven moments of levity. Again, it’s the western genre roots that drive the narrative rather than an overbearing need to top every action scene with some new CGI wizardry.

As much as “Logan” gets right, a few too many telegraphed plot elements take a toll on the film’s middle act, particularly the happenings at a quiet farmhouse. The sequence serves as an important thematic shift for the story, but the mechanics of how it goes down undermines the core conflict between Xavier and Logan. Whereas the rest of the story unspools in a way that feels natural and necessary, the farmhouse scene takes too long to drag its thematic needs out of a contrived setup.

It’s a misstep at a key moment, but not one that derails the overall emotional power of “Logan.” After all the blood spilling, skull-stabbing and limb hacking, the film lands in a touching, meditative place few superhero movies have even dared to attempt. It’s a satisfying end to a great movie character.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at [email protected].