James Mangold gives Wolverine an affecting drama about ageing and care, led by Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. The violence sometimes labours the point, but the awkward tenderness between these people earns our investment.
Logan asks what happens when a man accustomed to violence becomes responsible for people who need care. James Mangold makes a bruising, moving superhero drama from that question, although he sometimes mistakes another bout of bloodshed for a further insight. Ageing has made Logan less capable without making him much more agreeable, and Charles needs help that strength alone cannot provide. The western influence suits these diminished men, with their old abilities and uncertain usefulness, better than another demand to save the world would.
Jackman makes Logan’s reluctance convincing without asking us to find him charming. The performance allows pain to make him unpleasant, and allows that unpleasantness to coexist with an obligation he cannot simply discard. Patrick Stewart is equally valuable as Charles: his frailty makes the care between them uncomfortable, dependent on patience that Logan does not have in generous supply. We were moved by Logan looking after Charles, because Jackman lets the strain remain visible even when he is doing what is needed.
Dafne Keen’s Laura prevents the relationship from settling into a drama solely about old men and their regrets. Keen has the presence to make Laura matter without turning every exchange into an appeal for affection. In the screenplay by Mangold, Michael Green and Scott Frank, the makeshift family has to accommodate temperaments that do not conveniently fit together. The pleasure comes from watching the three performers resist easy warmth, so that we stay interested in how they might manage to tolerate each other.
John Mathieson’s cinematography makes the wear on Jackman’s face worth studying, keeping physical exhaustion central to our understanding of the character. François Audouy’s production design gives the future a used, unwelcoming feel that supports the film’s interest in people running short of options. Neither contribution needs to announce how serious everything is. These are useful choices for a superhero film in which the effort of continuing is supposed to matter as much as the ability to inflict damage.
Editors Michael McCusker and Dirk Westervelt are particularly effective in the exchanges between Logan, Charles and Laura, allowing the discomfort to register without tidying it away. At 137 minutes, the film gives those relationships room, though the repeated violence makes it feel longer than it needs to. Marco Beltrami’s score supplies an anxious forward pull. Its heavier passages are less useful, adding pressure to scenes whose physical brutality already leaves little room for us to feel anything else.
That brutality is both purposeful and occasionally tiresome. Mangold wants each act of violence to cost something, and the graphic fights make it difficult to imagine these bodies emerging untouched. Yet repetition takes over: once we understand what fighting does to Logan, further punishment can feel like insistence. The less developed supporting villains do not help, because they give the action a familiar simplicity that the difficult relationships elsewhere have worked hard to avoid.
The western comparison is useful because Logan’s ability to fight offers no assurance that he can live well with other people. Mangold gives that familiar problem weight by letting Jackman, Stewart and Keen be difficult company. We would recommend it for those performances alone. Just be prepared for the film to keep fighting after they have already persuaded us.
