Fans of Wolverine, it’s time to stop holding your breath, as the final installment of the series gives your favorite X-Men character the powerful good-bye that he deserves.
The action begins from the first scene onwards, where bruised and ailing Hugh Jackman tries to avoid a fight with goons who are trying to steal his Chrysler 300. His rage and punches are packed from this first scene on and this violence only builds, rapidly through the movie. Jackman, who goes under the alias name of James Howlett in this movie, is trying to make ends meet as a limo driver fending money to buy medicines for his sick mentor, Prof. Charles Xavier.
Secretly residing at a closed factory on the borders of Mexico battling with the now seizure prone Prof. Xavier, Logan’s life is turned upside down yet again by a girl, only this time she is a young-born mutant who also happens to be his daughter.
Dafne Keen plays Laura whose blades are sharper and deeper than her fathers’ while ripping off the limbs of bad guys. She is a mutant experiment of Dr. Rice (Richard Grant), one of the many antagonists of the movie. Keen is raised in a hospital, along with several genetically modified children, all of who are being trained as a part of building an army of destructive mutants by Grant. The kids are no longer needed when Grant and his men are successful in creating a bigger mutant monster, X-24 who is Jackman’s evil look alike. Inspired by the X-Men comics they read to the kids, the nurses of the hospital rescue the kids by helping them run away to embark a journey to illusionary mutant safe haven – Eden.
Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez), the nurse on the run with Keen, manages to track Jackman and pleads with our initially grudging hero to take them both to Eden. Jackman, despite being warned by Grant’s henchman Peirce (Boyd Holbrook) to not to help the girl, ends up taking up the job after being promised a hefty sum which he needs to help control progressive deteriorating Prof. Xavier. As imagined, the nurse dies after narrating the truth to Jackman and thus begins the blood-ridden and sentimental journey of Prof. Xavier, Logan and his daughter Laura.
Exceptionally executed fight sequences and ruthless tearing of body parts, James Mangold has managed to fit Wolverine’s emotional turmoil perfectly well into the high octane action, like missing pieces of a puzzle. The much needed humor amidst the turmoil is provided by the comments of Caliban (Stephen Merchant), and the rest of the kid-mutants who categorically shave a sleeping Logan, giving the audience a brief glimpse of Wolverine’s trademark beard, in an otherwise greying portrayal of him.
Keene manages to hold her own against her on-screen father and having steel blades coming out of her feet is not the only reason. Jackman, having aged right into his character, plays Logan with the right amount of ferocity and tiredness as that of an aging but still full of rage mutant. While some argue the movie could have been paced better and did not provide enough background stories for everyone like Caliban and Peirce, Logan is unabashedly tailored mostly for his fans, who have followed their hero right from the beginning till the very end. All in all, Logan’s claws in this one are sure to leave a deep cut in the hearts of his fans with the finale of this trilogy.
Score: 8/10
