Review for Logan

Introduction

For good or ill, the one part of Marvel comics turned movies that I have followed closely is the X-Men-verse, somewhat separate from the MCU, which takes up 90% of summer multiplex time these days, or so it seems. There have only been 10 movies (only 10, he says) concerning the X Men, a property that has stayed with 20th Century Fox since the late 90s. We have the three ‘classic X Men movies, three standalone Wolverine movies, and three First Class cast reboot movies, as well as Deadpool. There’s another Deadpool movie on the way, and a Dark Phoenix movie with the new cast, so the franchise is still ticking along. But for the ‘classic’ cast, the torch was passed when it came to X-Men: Days of Future Past, which was a crossover movie between two eras. With Hugh Jackman intent on hanging up his claws with the third Wolverine feature, it turned into the perfect opportunity to draw a curtain on the classic X-Men era, and that has resulted in a superhero movie unlike any we have seen before.


It’s the year 2029, and mutants are almost gone from the world. Logan has shucked the Wolverine moniker and now lives in Mexico, where it seems that age has finally caught up to him, and his powers have started to fade. He works as a limo driver, earning enough money to help him and Caliban take care of Charles Xavier, who is suffering from the early stages of dementia. The last thing he wants to do is be ‘heroic’, so when a woman approaches him for help, he’s characteristically brusque. But, she is offering serious money to drive her and her daughter Laura north across the border to North Dakota. Only Laura isn’t who she appears to be, and there are definite reasons why people would be hunting her, people with guns, people from a genetic research facility with guns...

Picture

Logan’s 2.39:1 widescreen 1080p transfer is not going to cause any complaints. The image is clear and sharp, there’s no sign of compression, aliasing or other similar artefacts, and the colours come across with digital consistency. There is a bit of an oddity towards the end of the film, with vehicles moving through a forest exhibiting an odd jerkiness as they pass between the trees, but that’s the only nit I have to pick with the film. In all other respects, the production design, the costumes, the location filming and the effects, it’s all as seamless as any big-budget blockbuster would be these days.


Then there’s Logan Noir, the second disc in this set. Back in the days of actual film, this would have been difficult if not impossible. Monochrome film was about contrast and shade, whereas colour film was about hue and saturation. If you ever played with your TV controls and turned everything B&W by turning down the colour, you’ll know that simply desaturating the colour doesn’t make a good monochrome image; instead it reduces clarity. By the other token, colourising monochrome film rarely makes it look like colour. Thankfully we’re in the digital age, where image manipulation is a far more practiced science. Logan Noir presents the film in 2.39:1 widescreen monochrome, and it’s a rich, detailed and striking image for the most part, looking as evocative as the black and white thrillers of old. That’s with the exception of scenes shot in low light, or the special effect applied to Charles Xavier’s seizures, when the whole thing takes on a digital video look.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 7.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo English, DD 5.1 English Audio Descriptive, and DTS 5.1 French, German, and Italian, with subtitles in these languages and Dutch. This is another meaningless search for flaws to complain about, other than the occasional tendency for actors to mumble their lines to the point that you skip back and turn the subtitles on. The clearly enunciated dialogue is audible enough, never drowned out by action or music, and when it comes to action, this is a nicely designed audio track that properly immerses you. The music too is somewhat unexpected, even dissonant when you compare it to the bombastic scores of X-Men movies past. It certainly evokes a dark and nihilistic tone to the film.

Extras

You get two discs in a Blu-ray Amaray, one on a central hinged panel. There is the usual Ultraviolet code, and the whole thing gets an o-card slipcover which repeats the sleeve art. The discs are of the type that holds their place in memory after being ejected from the player. They both get animated menus in the colour scheme appropriate to their movie.

The extras on the colour movie disc begin with six deleted scenes running to 7:45, with optional commentary from director James Mangold


The film also gets an audio commentary from James Mangold that is detailed, informative and well worth listening to.

Making Logan collects 6 featurettes, unsurprisingly on the making of the film. There are the usual clips from the film, behind the scenes footage, and interviews with the cast and crew. This runs to a total of 76:05 thanks to a Play All option.


Finally there are three theatrical trailers for the film.

Logan Noir presents its contents with a monochrome animated menu, while the only extra is the audio commentary repeated.

Conclusion

I was impressed when James Mangold directed The Wolverine, taking the be-clawed one out of his natural element, stripping him of his healing ability, and placing him in Japan. It was a movie that was a little more serious in outlook, focussed more on character, and the only thing that let it down was a stereotypical comic book ending. With Logan, he’s had a second bite of the cherry, and this time he has fully divested himself of the comic book elements to make a genuine character piece, hard-edged, dark and gritty. And it’s dark, gritty and adult in the proper way (aside from the profanity), not Dawn of Justice faux dark and gritty. And in making Logan, Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s respective swansongs as Wolverine and Charles Xavier, for me he’s made the best X-Men movie since the first one.


I loved the first X Men movie, it was small scale, and focused on character more than the special effects and the end-of-the-world plot, and Logan truly brings it full circle. The X-Men begins with Wolverine and Rogue, adult and child travelling together in a pick-up truck, two outsiders against the world. This film ends with Logan and Laura in a pick-up truck, once again, two outsiders against the world.


Logan is set in a future world where science has mostly done away with the mutant phenomenon, at least as a naturally occurring one. But science is also trying to control and create mutants on a production line, an army created in the test tube, which is the comic book background to this story. But Logan is really a movie about family, about relationships. When we first find Logan, he’s in a rather bizarre family unit of mutants, hiding away from the world. He’s the father figure, bringing home the bacon, or in this case the illicit drugs that he needs to take care of grandpa, Charles Xavier. The world-weary tolerance and pained love of a man whose own father figure is succumbing to dementia is evident and recognisable. In this family unit, Caliban serves as the mother figure, quick to inject a note of reality, while Logan pursues his modest dream of making enough money for them all to retire on.


It’s a depressing outlook for them, a family burdened by the inevitability of death, both for Xavier, and for Logan who is obviously ailing at the start of the story. But into their world comes a chance for a new life, a new start in the form of Laura, an escapee from the science lab mentioned earlier, and who has more in common with Wolverine than just a feral attitude. She also becomes the daughter figure in this family unit, and given that she is being pursued by the people that she escaped from, gives their immediate lives more meaning than just contemplating the inevitability of fate. She needs to get to safety, and so begins a road trip north, pursued all the while.


It becomes this road movie, this dysfunctional family finding each other through adversity. Xavier’s the first to see the human behind the beast in Laura, to make a connection with her, be a grandfather figure to her. This allows Logan to see the wise, intelligent man again, who had become obscured by the invalid that he’d been caring for, and of course over the course of their journey, he begins to bond with Laura too, to escape the fatalism that has been defining his life at this point.


Logan is a small-scale, character focused super-hero movie, which is just what the genre has needed for quite a while now, in this age of city destroying CGI climaxes. The special effects are there, the action sequences are still there, although once again, they are understandably small in scale. The villains too really make an impact, the soft-spoken Pierce, the kindly mercenary scientist Rice, they come across as people with comprehensible but selfish motives, not stereotypical villains, which ideally suits the realistic tone of the film. The R-Rating has made this a brilliantly atypical superhero movie, not just for the swears and the violence, but also for its unforgiving bleak outlook. This is a superhero film that doesn’t in anyway pander to the audience, and because of just that, Logan is just the superhero film that audiences needed. This release also fills that need, with a typically perfect Blu-ray presentation, although Logan Noir probably won’t get too many plays, despite its artistic monochrome impact.