Director James Mangold
Picturehouse, Liverpool
3rd – 23rd March 2017
Reviewed by John Owen
For those unacquainted with this franchise more than 17 years have elapsed since Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and (Hugh Jackman) wolverine hit the screens in the X-men blockbusters, changing the genre of Marvel films forever.
Here though the stand alone portrayal of a twisted and beaten alcohol addicted ex- superhero and his Alzheimer’s dependent father, once a mental force to be reckoned with now, but just a mental wrecking force. He gives a brooding performance but also shows the damage that all this rescuing and reluctant engagements with the forces of evil can render the gooder of dos into a don’t of goo.
The theme saving the next generation of X Bubbas in the person of a lost child deposited on Logan by a surrogate nurse mother, promptly dispatched by baddies. Akin to the kingdom of men plot she turns out to be part dolly the sheep clone and maybe have some of wolverines DNA ergo. Is he her paternal father what her father follow? If you dare!
Richard E. Grant has the role of Zander Rice, a mad scientist growing a clutch of the illegitimate south of the border, where the beer and cloning rules appear laxer, the son of the man who imbued Logan with metal propensities.
They pursue them to the industrial pied Terre of Logan’s, replete with all mod cons, metal storage tank wall to wall moss and damp as befitting ex-superheroes living incognito, more I Daniel Blake meets superman on a giro.
Dafne Keen plays Laura a wonderful little actress, playing the chicklet, with killing hot wired into her DNA, she dispatches goons with slices and stabbing just like dad except her Clark shoes come with more than a compass built in.
The death and gore rate tots up from the start when Logan hacks several Mexican Chicano jackers who attemp to jump a Logan’scar and quickly realises he won’t go quietly. Battling old age, senility, loss of free movement memory, lapse and incontinence, and that’s just Logan.
Patrick Stewart gives a sterling performance, to be reckoned with – frail vulnerable and bonkers. It seems a far cry from Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek always in command. Take the bridge number 11 while I go for a number 2.
The search for Eden or Oz, believing in your dreams, in this corporate, capitalistic, brutal heartless Orwellian state. The future alluded to by these children of the damned, clones, mutant’s goddamit they could well, be just Mexicans in Trumps America. Trying to Steve McQueen it over the wall on a wing and a prayer.
The film is quite long and relentless as we say goodbye to our beloved characters. First they come for the mutants, then the squeegee cleaners then ..You get the picture. Wise up this ain’t no fairy tale, its real. Comics always have a grain of truth in their mythology.
A tear came to my eye. I turned to check others to my left. A grown man in a cape wearing the wolf man outfit eating popcorn. On my right someone in his grandmothers outfit, from Psycho perhaps. I felt safe amongst these weirdos. For a moment we had our moment.