Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 92% (Critics) / 94% (Audience)
Directed By: James Mangold
Written By: James Mangold, Scott Frank, Michael Green
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Boyd Holbrook, Dafne Keen and Patrick Stewart
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Synopsis: In the near future, a weary Logan cares for an ailing Professor X in a hide out on the Mexican border. But Logan’s attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant arrives, being pursued by dark forces. – (Source)

The Good:
The story is pretty basic but the performances by Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, who seamlessly fit into these new incarnations of the characters we know and love, Stephen Merchant as mutant tracker Caliban and newcomer Dafne Keen as pre-teen killing machine Laura, a test tube baby mutant made from Wolverine’s DNA.
The chemistry between Jackman and Stewart is so comfortable and touching with Jackman’s Wolverine taking over the stressful role of caretaker for Stewart’s Charles Xavier as the most powerful telepath in the world suffers from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. You can tell that these two enjoy working with one another in every scene they share.
And little Dafne Keen steals many of the scenes she is in without speaking one word for the majority of the film. I would hope that Fox studios would sign her to a multi-picture deal because there is a lot more of Keen’s Laura that I would like to see.
And I cannot say enough superlatives about the level of violence in this film. A Wolverine movie is supposed top be full of blood, guts and people being hacked up with adamantium claws…LOGAN delivered that in spades. I was not as enthused about the directing job James Mangold did on the previous film in this franchise (THE WOLVERINE) but he seemed to just cut loose in LOGAN and it showed in the energy of the action scenes as well as with how effective the quite moments were.

The Bad:
Like most of the comic book/superhero movies in this current wave, LOGAN has some incredibly lame villains. One was a foppish mad scientist (whose name I still cannot remember) and a cyborg hired killer played by Boyd Holbrooke that the movie tried to convince me was Donald Pierce (one of my favorite X-Men villains from the comics) but who didn’t resemble Pierce at all. It also didn’t help that the character Holbrooke as playing was not very well-crafted to begin with. And then there was a clone of Wolverine which was basically a snarling Hugh Jackman with a buzz cut.
None of them made an impression at all.
Also every scene with the cliched salt of the Earth family that made the gigantic mistake of assisting Wolverine was unnecessary and forced as all hell.

The Ugly:
The ugliest thing about this movie was me making Viola Davis style ugly crying faces when certain beloved characters met grisly fates and went to the big Danger Room in the sky.

Final Verdict: Finally a good Wolverine movie! It took them 3 tries but with LOGAN the third time was truly the charm. LOGAN is serious but still fun and while the violence may be extreme it also doesn’t feel gratuitous. If this is really Hugh Jackman’s swan song as this character he went out on a high note.

Grade: B+