No Country for Old Man "Logan"

Hmmm… so what would happen if The Coen Brothers, John Ford, Werner Herzog and … oh, let’s say... Clint Eastwood all got together in a room and decided to create a “superhero” movie?  I’ll grant you a moment to recover from the cluster-mash of images that have certainly just exploded into your movie-loving imagination… Better now?  I had never actually contemplated such a question myself, but after seeing Logan, I wonder if the result of that dream collaboration would not have looked something like this.

Hugh Jackman has spent almost eighteen years playing this character across nine movies, and doing it so effectively that the original comic-book version of the character as a five-foot, five-inch tall Canadian has been almost entirely forgotten. Some of the movies he’s been in have been less than stellar, but no one has ever accused Jackman of giving less than one hundred percent of himself every time he’s strapped on those CGI-created claws.  You may not believe him when he says this is the last time he’ll play the character (speaking for myself, I am not completely convinced), but if this is to be his last outing as Wolverine, then we should all be glad that he saved the best for last.

The time is 2029, and director James Mangold (who also directed The Wolverine) shows us a time in which mutants have all but vanished from the face of the earth and no new ones are being born.  Logan has outlasted all his friends save for a now-Alzheimer’s ridden Charles Xavier (once again played by Sir Patrick Stewart), and is now a limousine driver in El Paso.  When Logan is not caring for the former Professor in their sorta-hideout across the border in Mexico, he often finds himself at the bottom of a bottle, a sad broken shell of a former hero.

That all must quickly fall by the wayside when Logan comes across Laura (played superbly by young newcomer Dafne Keen), a seemingly mute child on the run with her nurse and caretaker, Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez).  Gabriella explains that corporate mercenaries known as the "Reavers" are hunting Laura, and gives Logan a sizeable sum of money to ferry them to "Eden," a safe haven near the Canadian border.  Logan reluctantly agrees, but it doesn’t go according to plan, and he ends up with a surprise stowaway when he returns home.

Charles reveals he’s been communicating with Laura telepathically for some time, and that she is, in fact, a mutant.  The Reavers, led by the cyborg Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), descend upon Logan and Charles' hideout to take Laura, and here the reason for her being hunted is revealed. What ensues is a film that is equal parts road trip and western, as our three heroes set out for “Eden,” and along the way, the truth of what has happened to mutants, the X-Men, and why Laura is on the run is revealed.  

While the plot has some incredible revelations about the X-Men Movie “universe,” what drives this movie is character.  Carrying the physical and emotional weight of a 200-something year-old man, Logan limps his way across the country, coughing and exhausted, slowly grinding into nothing.  If not for the charges in his care, one would think Logan would like nothing else but to lie down in front of an oncoming train, but what Laura is (a human molded into weapon, not unlike Logan himself), and maybe more importantly WHO she is, gives the Wolverine one last purpose.

Of course, Jackman is once again iconic in this role, but let it be known that Dafne Keen is a showstealer here. Even in silence, she carries her character’s tragic history with her, eyes conveying years of horror and torture. When she finally does speak, it is powerful, yet incredibly charming.  If you thought Arya Stark was a little Toughie, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet (even to the point Laura has her own list of names to recite, though in an entirely different context).

The rest of the cast is exceptional, too.  Stewart is heartbreakingly good in the film, as dementia makes him both vulnerable and dangerous (his brain, which has the power to release psionic blasts paralyzing those anywhere near him, has been labeled a Weapon of Mass Destruction).  Stephen Merchant is endearing as Caliban, an albino mutant who helps Logan care for the professor, and while none of the villains are given a robust characterization, they are all given enough moments to shine in their roles that they are not mere mustache-twirling caricatures.

Logan is a visceral tale of what happens when a man given too much time finally starts running out of it.  It is an inspired, ambitious, and violent Neo-Western/ Superhero Chase film, leading me to think of David Mackenzie’s recent film Hell or High Water afterwards, with a couple of mutants thrown in there for good measure.  Mangold’s story takes time to allow a few key sequences to really stretch out and breathe, which may lead some viewers to feel the movie to seem "long" at times, but I did not see it that way. On the contrary, the film’s two-hour, twenty-minute length gives us an opportunity to see so much more of these characters, their surroundings, and how they respond to them, and makes the violence that ends some of those moments all the more shocking.

The best mutant stories, both in the comics and on film, give insight into the nature of humanity, and Logan does this in spades.  Time, mortality and legacy are all at the heart of this film, making it what I believe to be the strongest X-Men film to date.  Surely Messrs. Coen, Ford, Herzog and/or Eastwood could not have done any better.

"Deadpool"... and loving it!

Did you see X-Men Origins: Wolverine seven years ago?  Do you remember Ryan Reynolds portraying a character named Wade Wilson in that flick?  Do you recall he became a mutated monster they called “Deadpool” in that movie’s final act?  If you don't, then it's just as well, because we can now just pretend all that never happened. God knows comic nerds across the land have been trying to do just that, and Ryan Reynolds himself has been doing his darndest to make amends for that abomination ever since.

So, what is THIS movie?  Is it a Superhero movie?  Is is a love story?  Is it an Action/Revenge flick?  The short answer to all of these questions is “yes.” In the sense that the title character has appeared in various Marvel titles for the last twenty-five years, it’s a “Superhero” movie.  In the sense that we’re shown two seriously screwed-up individuals have a stereotypical movie “Meet-Cute” (as far as a disgraced mercenary and a prostitute can have a “Meet-Cute”) and realize they were meant for each other… and we as an audience actually buy into it, it’s a love story.  In the sense that a “British Bad Guy” kidnaps said girl and our hero will maim/mutilate/dismember/kill countless henchmen along the way to rescuing her, it’s an Action/Revenge movie.  Most of all, in the sense that Deadpool is a character that requires someone who is good at talking trash to play him, and Ryan Reynolds can certainly talk trash with the best of ‘em, then it’s a comedy… and possibly one of the raunchiest comedies you might see this year.

If any actor was ever born to play a certain role, Ryan Reynolds was born to play Wade Wilson, a former Special Ops soldier who, after being dishonorably discharged, becomes a mercenary, but has fallen to such menial work as protecting a college girl from a stalker. Wilson soon meets the love of his life, Vanessa (“Gotham” and “Homeland”'s Morena Baccarin), and the two find giddy teenaged-type raunchy happiness in each other until Wade is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Rather than subject her to a life of having to watch him waste away, he disappears, but is found by a mysterious man from the same Weapon X program that produced Wolverine. This man in black (or “Agent Smith” as Wilson dubs him - rewatch The Matrix if you must) offers him a chance at curing his cancer while also gaining superpowers by means of procedures that involve extreme amounts of torture at the hands of the combination mad scientist/bodybuilder supervillain Ajax (Ed Skrein from Transporter: Refueled).  Wilson does have his cancer cured and does gain superpowers, mainly, the ability to heal himself from any wound, but it also permanently disfigures him.  After Wilson escapes the Weapon X program by blowing up the building and waiting while it burns down around him (he can heal from anything now, remember?), he assumes the name Deadpool and vows to find Ajax and have his revenge.  Pretty simple, right?  

Produced on a shoestring budget of $30 million (well, “shoestring” when compared to most other hundred-million dollar movies in the genre), Reynolds as producer and director Tim Miller take advantage of the lack of resources by having only two major action sequences and focusing on Deadpool’s acerbic personality, the very trait that has most endeared him to comic readers.  I can’t help but think that 20th Century Fox must have been collectively thinking, “Hell, we’re not giving them any real money, so let ‘em do whatever they want.”  After forty-plus years of watching movies, it is rare that I see something in a film that I haven’t seen in some shape or form before, but Deadpool provides that the instant the lights go down.  The opening credit sequence contains snarky descriptions that many a cynical moviegoer has said in his own head while reading credits before, but never actually seen written on screen.  Suffice to say that any director who credits himself as “Overpaid Tool” and his star as "Some Douchebag" has earned a little respect from me.  

Oh, sure, the framework of Deadpool is pretty stereotypical, in that we have the wise-cracking Best Friend (T.J. Miller, no relation to the film's director), the love interest, the afore-mentioned British Bad Guy, and a plot that doesn’t vary much from a Charles Bronson revenge yarn. What sets Deadpool apart is that it is a hyperactive, almost ADD-riddled exercise in fanboy-made cinema, and I don’t mean that as an insult. Deadpool is the superhero character (a term used very loosely in this case) you've never seen in one of these movies before, as he breaks the "fourth wall" a la Ferris Bueller on several occasions, addressing the audience directly, acknowledging the movie he’s in and even pointing out some of the tropes we all assume we’ll see in other superhero-type flicks.   

The insertion of a couple of X-Men trying to get Deadpool to temper his murderous ways throws yet another change in the mix, and also establishes that this story is set in the same universe as Fox’s other X-Men movies. Knowing this extremely R-rated story is taking place in the PG-13 world of X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past makes some of Deadpool’s in-jokes and asides all the more hilarious (“I just can’t keep up with all these changing timelines!” he even quips at one point).

There’s no doubt that Deadpool is not for everybody.  If you love Ryan Reynolds in a way that drove you to buy multiple copies of that People magazine that named him “Sexiest Man Alive” a few years back, then you may think this movie is for you.  It may not be.  Then again, you may be deranged enough to enjoy it.  I happened to think it was a tremendous, riotous hoot, but there’s no way I can tell you for sure what your take might be.  I’ll merely provide this bit of advice - this movie ain’t exactly Van Wilder with a mask and swords, but it’s sure as Hell not the Deadpool we were given in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  You can decide for yourself what to do with that assessment.

"The Wolverine" gives us nerds a reason to keep living.

I once read a magazine article (in OMNI Magazine, I believe, but it was so long ago that I can’t swear to that) that described a study where certain folks were hypnotized into believing themselves immortal.  The purpose of the study was to determine what behavioral changes these folks would exhibit towards those they believed to be “mere mortals.”  The surprising results were that the newfound “immortals” promptly lost all initiative to do much of anything, becoming lazier and more slothful, and pretty much turning into couch potatoes.  After all, since they now had all the time in world, what’s the big rush to get motivated and accomplish anything? 

It’s an interesting question, one of many that mankind has pondered about the possible pitfalls of immortality, and similar to the train of thought plaguing the mutant superhero Wolverine in this latest solo film for the member of the X-Men. 

Although not explicitly stated, The Wolverine appears to be a direct sequel to 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand (not that any of us were really wanting THAT cinematic experience to continue, mind you…), as the movie starts with Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, in all of his bulked-up, gym-freak glory) trying to come to grips with the losses he experienced in the second and third X-Men films.  Before finding him choosing to live alone in the wilderness after the events that concluded that film, we see via flashback how Logan was interred in a Japanese Prisoner-of-War camp just outside Nagasaki during the closing days of the Second World War, and since we all know what happened in Nagasaki that second week of August in 1945, we aren’t surprised to see Logan’s mutant healing abilities put the the ultimate test when the “Fat Man” bomb comes a-calling.  During the firestorm, he manages to save a Japanese soldier, who over the next seventy years becomes a billionaire industrialist, and never forgets the debt he owes to the mutant stranger. 

Flash forwards to the present day, and it seems Logan has come to think that immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be if it means he outlives everyone to whom he may grow emotionally attached.  He lives unsheltered in the Canadian wilderness, avoiding human contact save for an occasional visit to a small town to obtain supplies.  Out of the blue appears Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a mysterious little Japanese Sprite of a girl with ninja-level swordsmanship skills who insists Logan return with her to Japan, as the man he saved from nuclear fire all those years ago is now dying and wants to see Logan one last time to offer him a gift of thanks.   That “gift” turns out to be the possibility of a way for Logan to lost his super-healing powers and become mortal, which he refuses, but soon finds his healing ability greatly reduced, if not stripped away completely, anyway.  Throw in some Japanese culture clashes, some big-business political intrigue and a bunch of ninjas, and you have all the makings of a slam-bang comic-book movie for grownups. 

Although I was surprised by the selection of director James Mangold to helm this movie when I first heard the news more than a year ago, it was certainly a welcome one.  His body of work would not necessarily make one think of him when looking for somebody to make a Superhero movie, but he has done action movies before (namely the Tom Cruise vehicle Knight and Day), and I loved Walk the Line and his remake of 3:10 to Yuma, so I had total confidence that his vision of a Wolverine movie would be nowhere near as cartoonish as the last attempt turned out to be.  Sure, this film follows the superhero-genre’s current trend of being more introspective and less bullets-and-profanity (well, except for “The Avengers,” but who am I to nit-pck?), but the big action set-pieces here are definitely exciting and do serve to propel the story, not interrupt it.  Wolverine’s fight along the exterior of a speeding bullet train in particular is probably the highlight of the movie’s second act.  The fight scenes are a bit more rooted in reality than, say Superman’s might be, which helps keep the tone of the movie a bit more in the vein of a character study - not necessarily like Ghandi or Lawrence of Arabia, but you get my drift. 

Hugh Jackman slips on the claws-and-funky-haircut for a sixth time in this film, and he wears the role as comfortably as an old suit.  Not that he ever overplayed the character in any of his previous performances, but perhaps he is (and we, the audience, are) so familiar with this role now that there’s almost no effort involved in projecting the character anymore.  The well-written script certainly aided Jackman by giving him interesting things to do and say, and I found the Yukio character very interesting as well, all the more impressive because of the performance of the relative newcomer Rila Fukushima, a young actress with virtually no film acting experience at all.  The only character that struck me as being a “comic-book” character was Viper, seemingly played as cartoonishly as possible by Russian actress Svetlana Khodchenkova.  Her beady eyes, vampish body language and garish costumes projected a bit more “ham” than the material warranted, but this was the exception in the cast of characters, not the rule. 

I consider myself fortunate to be the age I am, maturing in my nerd-taste as apparently those who make films to cater to these tastes mature as well.  I have loved comic books and related material all of my life, but contrary to some evidence, I am a grownup now, and while the Richard Donner Superman and Tim Burton Batman films were entirely satisfying to me in their day, it takes more effort now to give me “superhero” material that doesn’t seem better-suited for the Disney XD channel.  Given how silly the first Wolverine solo film turned out to be, it wouldn’t have taken much to make a sequel that wasn’t a great improvement to me, but The Wolverine is definitely a great improvement, one that can (and should) make you all but forget the first one. 

…and if I end up living forever, maybe I’ll find this sort of filmmaking getting better and better and continue having a reason to live.