Logan (2017)

There's a moment in Logan where you realise you're not watching a superhero film anymore. You're watching a man fall apart. And Hugh Jackman, who has carried this character for the better part of two decades, makes you feel every single year of it. This is the performance he was always capable of, exhausted, furious, grieving, and finally allowed to be all three at once.

Logan is set in a near-future that feels less like science fiction and more like a slow, dusty dying. Mutants are nearly gone. The world has moved on. And Logan is running on fumes, his healing factor failing him, his body a map of scars that won't close properly anymore. He's caring for a frail, mentally fragile Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart in one of the most quietly devastating performances you'll see in this genre. There's nothing grand about it. It's small, tender, and heartbreaking. These two men, once symbols of power and purpose, reduced to hiding and scraping by. Then a young girl arrives and drags them both back into the world whether they want it or not.

Dafne Keen, as that girl, is extraordinary. She barely speaks for large stretches of the film, and yet she commands every scene she's in. There's a ferocity to her, a coiled, feral energy, but also a vulnerability underneath that she lets you glimpse just long enough before she snaps it shut again. She more than holds her own against two screen veterans, which is no small thing.

The action here is brutal in a way that actually means something. This is an R-rated film, claws and blood and consequence, no city-levelling chaos, no armies of faceless drones to mow through. Every fight feels dangerous, because Logan might not survive it. That shift in stakes changes everything. Violence in most superhero films is spectacle. Here it's cost. It's a choice the filmmakers made and it pays off every single time.

That said, I won't pretend the film is flawless. The middle section drags. Logan's deterioration is the emotional engine of the story, but there are stretches where the repetition of his pain starts to feel like wheel-spinning rather than deepening. The road-trip structure is the right one for this story, but a tighter edit in places might have sharpened it considerably.

But when it lands, it lands with real weight. This is a film about legacy and fatherhood and what it means, after a lifetime of violence and loss, to finally let go. Those aren't superhero themes. Those are human ones. And that's precisely why Logan works when so many films in this space don't. It isn't interested in setting up the next entry or expanding the universe. It's interested in ending something with dignity and grief and love.

I've watched across that long run in the X-Men series with all its peaks and valleys, and I reviewed what the low end of the franchise looks like when I covered X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Logan is the corrective to all of that. It's the film this character always deserved. I also think it pairs interestingly with The Wolverine, which took some steps in this direction but didn't quite have the nerve to go all the way. Logan goes all the way.

For me, this stands above almost everything else in the Marvel stable, and it manages it not through spectacle but through character. Jackman's swan song, Stewart's farewell, Keen's arrival. Three performers at the top of their game in a film that trusts its audience to sit with something sad and real and worth feeling.

Four stars. One of the greatest superhero films ever made, and proof that the genre is capable of genuine emotional honesty when someone is brave enough to demand it.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2025-11-02

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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