Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is its biggest icon. The surly, muscle-bound, metal-clawed hero has appeared in countless X-Men films and spinoffs since his debut in 2000; in that time, the comic-book movie has evolved from genre sideshow to a chief pillar of many a film studio’s economy. It might sound trite to call Jackman’s work as Wolverine seminal, but it’s certainly hard to imagine anyone else in the role—a fact that gives Logan, supposedly a sendoff for the character, real oomph.
It also helps that director James Mangold, who also directed Jackman in the previous Wolverine film ( 2013’s simply titled The Wolverine) , secured an R-rating for Logan’s last hosanna, and he makes the most of it. This is a grimly violent movie, filled with vicious stabbings, frequent profanity, and a general sense of fatalism. It’s also quite good, selling itself as a Peckinpah-inspired Western about an old gunslinger riding out on one more doomed quest for glory. It would have been easy for Logan to retread the character’s greatest hits in another epic superhero battle, or to delight in the newly available levels of gore. It opts for something different, and it largely works, giving Jackman a worthy final chapter to hang his claws on.
