Logan

James Mangold has a crafted a surprisingly introspective film in Logan, as the X-men universe closes the book on The Wolverine – for now. Hugh Jackman returns as an aged and battered version of the endearing, metal-clawed badass Logan, who is now holed up in an abandoned oil field in Mexico with an occasionally demented Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and the peevish albino mentalist Caliban (Stephen Merchant). It’s 2029, and mutants are all but wiped out, their powers essentially neutralized by biological weaponry. Logan’s own regenerative abilities are just about gone although he is still metallically enhanced. These events have brought Logan to point where he’s saving to buy a boat, so that he might load up his shipmates, and set off for the distant horizon, leaving humanity to its own devices. The plan is interrupted by the appearance of a 10-year-old girl (Dafne Keen) whose dour demeanor and retractable claws suggest she and Logan have something in common. She is being chased by the miserable Dr. Rice (Richard E. Grant) whose potions are responsible for the mutant extermination and whose experiments South of the Border have created an army of “gifted” children who he hoped to turn into fighters. Mangold doesn’t hold anything back in this swan song for the beloved Wolverine as he and the nimble moppet slash, disembowel and decapitate like there’s no tomorrow. And, in the end, that’s the film’s real poser: How does one measure the value of a life when it’s been spent taking the lives of others. Does one such as the Wolverine deserve to sail off into the sunset?