Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse.
It is sometimes logical than the final instalment of any story is the one that makes you understand just how much you love the character that you have seen grow, that their life’s conclusion is paramount to everything that has happened before; it is only in the last blink towards the eternal camera that you realise just exactly they have brought to the world.
One of Marvel’s most popular heroes, across both cinema and in the original comic books will arguably always be Wolverine, Logan, brought to life by the superb Hugh Jackman and whilst his stand alone stories have not been particularly well received, too many great stories from the Marvel house having been ignored, they have at least encompassed the man and the monster to the point of elevated heroics and the final chapter of Wolverine’s story as a X-Man is one that truly is the finest of them all.
Endings come but for Logan, his long life is one that has been built upon not even truly knowing where it all began and Logan does not disappoint in revealing anything more than it needs to, the air of mystery of the beast with human heart is retained and made glorious by the cast, including a rather sensational Patrick Stewart, a jaw dropping performance by Stephen Merchant and Daphne Keen who wows the audience as the enigma that is Laura.
The pathos is enormous, it overwhelms the cinema goer and it is hard to ignore, each moment that you see Hugh Jackman on the screen it is hard not to feel the stab of pain, of grief in his eyes and when you mix in the anger, the terror in his mind of the realisation of what he has lived through, it is nothing short of a towering performance by a man who really, alongside Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen, has given popular culture a real shot in the arm as the X-Men have flourished on screen.
Logan is the finest of the three solo outings for one of cinema’s greatest ever misfits, his ache, his sense of diminishing purpose comes off the screen and hits the audience exactly where they should be, across the imagination; no matter how tough you think you are, Time has a habit of taking you piece by piece, we are not immortal after all and Logan proves it with unnerving sentiment and panache.
A tremendous addition to the Marvel films, a finale worth every second on screen.
Ian D. Hall