Director: James
Mangold
Notable Cast: Hugh
Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Richard E. Grant, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen
Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal
The X-Men
franchise has seen its ups and downs, but it’s only when one of the entries
into this almost 20 year franchise takes a risk on something new that it finds
itself resonating after the fact. Outside of X2, which remains perhaps the purest and most potent of the basic
formula, these chances have paid off. The time setting and new cast in First Class, the time hopping nature and
epic tone of Days of Future Past, or
even the samurai cinema motifs of The
Wolverine have made the franchise worth following even if it occasionally
stumbles into some rocky territory of execution (I’m looking at my copy of X-Men: Apocalypse right now.) The latest
entry into the series and third for the spin-off franchise to feature Wolverine
as the lead character is not only one of those films that takes a chance with
its western style inspiration and R-rating, it’s the best that this franchise
has seen thus far. Logan is a film
that not only entertains in an action film manner and quirky humor that has always
come with Wolverine as a character, but its messages of a life time of violence
and regret, partnered with a focus on familial drama, and a timely expansion of
its X-Men themes that make it piece of cinematic art that will last longer than any
of the previous entries. This is not only an X-Men spin off, this is truly a film that encompasses the heart and
soul of a character bound for the history books and it’s executed with the
precision and artful grace of inspired cinema. Logan is not only the superhero film we all wanted, it’s the superhero
film that this genre desperately needed.