new to DVD: Logan

Audiences and critics alike have been hailing Logan as the greatest superhero film of all time. Personally, I think that's more than a bit of hyperbole. When it comes to audiences, it seems that, for a while, every superhero movie that comes out is inevitably exclaimed to be either "the best ever" or "the worst ever," until the next one comes out. But the critics? Yeah, I can see why they'd put the label on. Critics have only begrudgingly accepted the fact that superhero films have been dominating the box office for the last several years, and Hollywood's only way to appease them is to occasionally release a "realistic" superhero film, in which the characters have to deal with real-world issues like politics, poverty, racism, etc. Then the demand for sequels directly leads to rapidly escalating levels of spectacle, and soon you've got aliens fighting guys in tights as monsters roar and spaceships zoom across the screen. Critics stop taking the genre seriously, until a filmmaker somewhere says, "but what if our main guy is in the real world?" and the whole cycle repeats itself again and again.

Logan is decidedly in the "realistic" part of the cycle. For the vast majority of the film, most characters with the more fantastic superpowers are absent, and the three main superhero characters -- James "Logan" Howlett (formerly known as superhero Wolverine), Professor Charles Xavier (formerly known as Professor X), and Caliban (formerly known as . . . well, as Caliban) are all aging has-beens, long since retired from superheroics. They also seem to be the only mutants (for the uninitiated in this cinematic universe, "mutant" is short-hand for "person simply born with their superpowers," as opposed to someone who obtains them through some fantastical means) left on Earth, as this story takes place in a world where mutants seem to have been gradually dying out as a race.

There's a reason why these guys don't do superheroing anymore. A combination of aging and circumstance has rendered their most dominant superpowers useless. Caliban's sole power is detecting other mutants -- useless in a world where almost no other mutants exist. One of Wolverine's most prominent abilities has always been his astounding "healing factor," which used to allow him to heal from wounds at astonishing rates, but in this story is unreliable and has slowed down significantly. And Xavier's superpower is telepathy, a power that is significantly muted by the medication he has to take. (When he forgets or is unable to take his medication, he either falls into senility or, worse, has seizures that, due to his telepathic nature, cause everyone else in the vicinity to have seizures as well.)

Caliban, Logan, and Xavier live in poverty in a small complex of otherwise abandoned, ramshackle buildings in the desert just south of the Mexican border. Logan is the only one of the three that has any source of income (as a limo driver -- a job he, surprisingly, doesn't seem to mind), and as a result, they have a hard time making even their meager ends meet. Being able to afford Xavier's desperately needed medication is especially an issue. Xavier's telepathic seizures temporarily paralyze humans, and fill mutants with neurological pain; they feel the telepathic energy as waves of hurricane-like winds emanating from Xavier's head.

The story is set into motion when, after years of wondering if they're the only mutants left in the world, the trio encounters Laura, a mysterious little girl who is not only a mutant, but whose superpowers closely and mysteriously mimic those of Wolverine himself. (Well . . . maybe not so mysterious, as the answer is fairly obvious.)

The girl is determined to get to Eden, a possibly only-mythical place on the Canadian/ North Dakotan border, where she believes that other young mutants are waiting for her in a safe haven for those of their kind. Unfortunately, a whole army of bad guys are after her, for reasons that are only gradually explained, and so she needs Logan's help to get there.

Road trip!

Laura, Logan, and Xavier head out on their cross-country journey to see if Eden really exists.  (Caliban has been captured by the bad guys.) Laura has reason to believe in the existence of Eden, Logan has equally compelling reasons to doubt it, and Xavier insists that it ultimately doesn't matter, as long as Laura gets the chance to find out for herself.

Maybe at this point, it all sounds absurd, or maybe it all sounds compelling. I will point out that the writers' resumes are all to be admired, and I feel that their talents are certainly on display here. The dialogue is intelligent and meaningful (nary a catch-phrase in sight), allowing the characters, and the film, to explore such themes as aging, family dynamics, and the need to have a purpose in life. The action scenes are far less random than those in most action movies, here occurring only when they make sense in the narrative. And the main characters are three-dimensional. We sense that these people care about each other, and that helps us care about them too.

I'd also point out that this is a shockingly violent movie. That may seem like an odd thing to say about a superhero film, a genre in which half or more of the screentime is often devoted to fight scenes. But even the so-called "realistic" superhero films tend to feature bloodless or even cartoonish deaths, akin to the old black-and-white Westerns, in which you know a character has been shot only because the actors clutch their belly and fall down. These bloodless fight scenes are even more remarkable for a character like Wolverine, whose primary weapons are razor-sharp claws. But throughout his depiction in the X-Men series, Wolverine has mostly used his claws for other purposes -- climbing walls, blocking bullets, cutting through objects rather than flesh. He rarely stabs people, and when he does, we know it because . . . well, because they almost bloodlessly clutch their bellies and fall down.

Not so in Logan, in which, for better or worse, we finally see what it would really be like if a guy took sharp weapons into battle. Many, many people (the villain really does seem to have an entire army of thugs at his disposal) are either sliced or stabbed throughout the course of Logan, and when they are, director James Mangold doesn't shy away from the blood or the gore. Compared to how Wolverine's fight scenes have been handled in previous films, yes, it is shocking to see. There's only a few seconds of nudity in Logan (blink and you'll miss it), but between Logan's course language and the violence of the action scenes, the R rating -- another rarity for superhero films -- is certainly earned.

In the end, Logan may not be "the best ever" -- I tend to think such exclamations are ultimately ridiculous the more you think about it -- but it is highly entertaining, and if critics love it, it's because it's more intelligent and insightful than films of this type usually allow themselves time to be.

The X-Men movies are lucrative, and Wolverine is the franchise's most popular character, so I doubt this is the last we've seen of him, one way or another. But Hugh Jackman has announced that this is the last time he'll play the character, and this seems like a fitting good-bye to his take on Logan, as the movie itself is such a reflection on the personality of Logan/ Wolverine: brutal, cynical, even harsh at times, but ultimately with a good heart, surprisingly smart, and never short of entertaining.