What critics are saying about ‘Logan’

Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are reportedly saying goodbye to the roles of Wolverine and Professor X, respectively, in “Logan,” the 10th film in the “X-Men” franchise.  And from what the critics are saying, they are going out on a very high note.

And that’s exactly what The Seattle Times reviewer Soren Andersen says:

“Jackman and Stewart give perhaps the most heartfelt performances that they’re ever brought to an ‘X-Men’ movie. Though the tone of the movie is pervasively downbeat, they’re both going out on a very high note.”

The Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers has praise for Stewart (“so good you want to applaud”) and Jackman (“never been better or more emotionally alive”) and compares the film to a Western: 

“Shane is directly referenced in one scene and the elegiac tone of the film recalls Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning ‘Unforgiven.’ And like those old horse operas, (Director James) Mangold investigates the nature of heroism by giving the grizzled Wolverine someone new to protect.”

Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter says the movie seamlessly melds Marvel mythology with Western mythology: 

“James Mangold has crafted an affectingly stripped-down stand-alone feature, one that draws its strength from Hugh Jackman’s nuanced turn as a reluctant, all but dissipated hero. That he rises to the occasion when a child is placed in his care is the stuff of a well-worn narrative template, yet it finds a fair level of urgency in this telling.”

 The film earns its R rating, but hope shines through, says A.A. Dowd of the A.V. Club:

“Those who think comic-book movies have gotten too serious for their own good will likely find more to object to in ‘Logan,’ which is about as grimly poker-faced as ‘Deadpool’ was irreverent. By the end, the carnage has become almost surreal in its intensity: There’s only so many times that you can watch someone get their skull punctured by pointy hand daggers before you start feeling a little numb to it. But the movie’s fatalism never quite shades into Snyderesque nihilism; the core X-Men principles of hope, inclusion, family, and generational torch-passing animate even its grisliest passages, until a final scene (and final image) that shines a beacon of faint light through the darkness.”

For those non-comic book fans, who might hesitate to see the movie? Manohla Dargis of The New York Times says it’s so good you almost forget it’s a comic-book movie:

“’Logan’ is a strong argument for bringing the comic-book movie down to earth. It solidly hits its marks as it moves the franchise furniture around, and features striking special-effects scenes in which the world shudders to a near standstill. Here, though, the pyrotechnics serve the story and are of a piece with a scaled-down realism that acknowledges — in its scars, viscera and flood of parentless children — the cost of the endless fight. It loves that fight, of course: That’s entertainment. But as it intimately tethers you to Logan and Laura, at times uncomfortably (their claws were made for impaling), it reminds you that these mutants are never less than human.”