Logan - Review

Hello, "R" Rating. This is not the X-Men movie you are used to. Cartoony violence has been replaced with bloody, graphic violence and the standard PG-13 superhero dialogue has been replaced with F-Bombs left, right and center. At first, the excessive swearing felt extremely forced. Every second word out of Wolverine's mouth was F this and F that. Not to mention that Charles Xavier even dropped some F-Bombs. It seemed like the writers were like, "Yes! We have an R rating now! Let's see how many F-Bombs we can shove into this thing!" Thankfully, over the course of the movie, the swearing seemed more natural. I should also note that this movie is depressing. Good god, this movie is sad. The premise is that all your favourite X-Men are dead and arguably the two main members of the X-Men are old and dying. Depressing as it is, it did raise the stakes significantly. Wolverine isn't this indestructible wrecking force anymore. He is weak, slow, and old which, by default, makes the opposition just that much stronger. Speaking of the antagonists, this movie started off with a pretty good one. Boyd Holbrook plays the evil Pierce. This guy would have been a great villain until they pull the "Oh... he's just working for someone else. He's just the muscle." card. Not to mention that when we meet who he is actually working for, he is boring. So the antagonists are kind of weak in terms of character. That's the only real fault I can think of in this movie, other than it is much slower than any of the other X-Men movies. What makes this movie work and stand above the rest is the over-the-top action and the addition of Dafne Keen as the little Laura (or as I like to call her Wolverine Junior). It's really menacing when a 10-year-old girl can take down an entire S.W.A.T. team and not say a single word. Not only can she play a great bad-ass, but she captures the sweet curious innocence of a mutant that is so lost in the world and her only hope of survival is Logan and Charles Xavier. The kid knocks it out of the park. She reminds me of the boy from The Shining. Their acting completely from just their facial expressions and their gaze. Overall, I'd say this is the Dark Knight of the X-Men franchise. More gritty, more dark, more, drama, more real. Get your tissues ready cause this is an emotional one and this is a great X-Men movie!