Logan reviewed by Mark Kermode

Loden which is I mean best described as being less a superhero film than a film about aging with arthritis and arthritic claws yeah absolutely so it's an x-men movie for people who prefer westerns to comic book franchises it's also a movie for somebody like me who struggles to remember exactly which character did what and when because it's much more stripped-down much more cinematic much more Moody much more melancholic so it set some years in the future there is a date which is mentioned although it's not entirely clear whether that date is when things are happening one point somebody says 2029 but you're not sure whether that's actually when this thing is playing out and Logan is now earning a living by the border working as a limo driver he looks Haggard he looks ragged he looks rundown he has bloodshot eyes life is not treating him well he is looking after child Xavier who is suffering from from from spasms and who in his later life as he had at one point a character says if he has a degenerative brain disease in the most dangerous mind in the world and in order to if when these things happen they cause earthquakes so he has to be constantly medicated and medication seems to be being available only on the black market they are living essentially in what looks like a old water tower in a sort of hidden existence away from everything every now and then we see Logan becoming Wolverine but at the beginning of it he appears to be living what just looks like a raggedy and terrible existence only coming into character when it's absolutely demanded here's a computer foot and a mr. myson you understand you're trespassing right now right I have an easement with the previous owner of your previous being the operative word it was this the guy could either get back in your nice truck I call looks like mr. Monken hires and muscle looks that way it's a friend of mine friend with a big mouth I hear that a lot and you probably hear this too more than I'd like and you know the drill I will count to three and you're going to start walking away a righteous one I have a lawyer now two three you know the drill good Ally I like that yeah so co-written by and directed by James Mangold and a very very different kind of movie from the movies which are preceded it it's a film which invokes Shane which is watched on a television and which is quoted and which circles time and again back to the line that you know there's no living with the killing it's a film which owes more to the long shadow of for example Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven than it does to what you usually expect from the superhero movie um there's an awful lot of it which is almost sort of chamber piece dialogue with characters talking about their pasts talking about their future talking about the state of mind that they are or are not in when the violence happens it's nasty violence I mean this is a 15 rated movie and it's it's a movie which is absolutely not designed for the for the younger viewers and obviously we've had precedents for this I mean you know Deadpool was was people talked about it being in a sweary violent superhero movie and in fact even if you go back to I remember when Tim Burton was making the first Batman and it was stories for a long time that Tim Burton was going to make a kind of Dark Knight II sort of movie which would be you know 15 or 18 rated or r-rated and because that never happened but now we passed the tipping one it is possible to make those kind of movies for a different audience for four an adult audience anyway the story then is that he finds himself essentially charged with looking after a strange young girl morally by defeating them initially he's completely resistant until fate forces his hand and he is forced to essentially take on the responsibility of somebody we're having sort of shared those responsibilities in the past and what you get is a film which absolutely it's full of sort of you know modern political contemporary references the you know the border the American Mexico border the idea of society being in some kind of decrepit retreat the idea of big corporations still being you know conniving and dangerous and yet it is also really a kind of a family road movie in a very strange sense a story about a group of people pulling together and making it you know making a journey is a bid for freedom it's also primarily a story about living with a legacy and living with a legacy advance as I said when the violence happens the violence is full full-on sort of splattery violence it's nasty its grisly people get hurt and yes you could say on the one hand this is part of it you know an action trope I mean for example we look at another movie today headshot in which there's loads of notes that's up but there's not really a sense of pain I mean this is a film in which people do get hurt in which this one sequence in which we see Wolverine with his claws which really really appear to be sort of you know giving him in the way that your finger to I don't know whether you're at this point yet but when you get to 50 something you know playing the piano is not quite as easy as it was before I know I really do you really do because that's how you had to give up your your concert the moonlight sonata was never quite the same and what I particularly liked about it was that it's a film that kind of stood on its own as a piece of cinema so it's got a terrifically interesting score which at some point in the early chase sequence is juggling jazzy piano and strange diz rhythmic drums it's a film which absolutely is about brutality and is about coming to terms with brutality and about what it means to have I mean at times there was and they won't they won't thank me for saying this in which it kind of reminded me of blood father the movie with Mel Gibson which I actually rather liked that kind of you know that b-movie Sensibility but most impressively it's a film which stood up on its own as a sort of don't be a sounds weird to even say this but as an intense character study about people facing the end of something people looking back at something people attempting to come to terms with something an understanding that there is something I mean that line in it is unforgiving it's a hell of a thing killing a man that's that and all the way through it it's those Western references that are right to the fore I mean obviously it is also a you know it's in here I mean there's a lovely detail in it that the comic books are used as evidence of a fiction something to the young has got these comic books and it will be looking at them go yeah those aren't real that's not what happened you mean there's a bit a fragment of reality in those stories but that's the comic book version of it and you sort of get the sense of that with the film but there's almost like this film is the version that he's talking about as being separate from the other films I was really surprised by how powerful it was

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 269,419

Keywords: James Mangold, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Logan, Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, BBC, 5live

Id: BRBZIO13JXA

Length: 7min 32sec (452 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2017