LOGAN (US - 2017) Directed by James Mangold. Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold and Michael Green. Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse, Rey Gallegos, Daniel Bernhardt, Jason Genao. (R, 137 mins) I hit a wall with Marvel and DC movies about a year ago with the realization that I just didn't care about them anymore. LOGAN seems to be cognizant of that sentiment as it's a comic book movie like no other, one that seems designed for people who are tired of the same old comic book movies. It's a risky proposition for something so commercial to go so defiantly against expectations. An established, moneymaking franchise hasn't wandered this far in an unforeseen direction since UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING. For starters, LOGAN is the most graphically gory film of its type since the 2008 cult classic PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, almost playing at times like it comes from an alternate universe where Mel Gibson was hired to direct THE PASSION OF THE WOLVERINE. It's doubtful that this move into hard-R territory would've been possibly without the huge success of the smug and douchey DEADPOOL, but that's where the comparisons end. A deconstruction of its franchise's own mythology and a downbeat, mournful elegy of the dark side of heroism inspired by Mark Millar's Old Man Logan comics series, the ambitious LOGAN is cerebral and audacious, an outside-the-box attempt at exploring the psychology of a scant few lost and broken X-Men who are the last of their kind and know the end is near. It's visceral, bleak, and uncompromising, with director/co-writer James Mangold taking a more personal thematic approach to this than he did on 2013's little-loved THE WOLVERINE, which he took on as more of a gun-for-hire job after Darren Aronofsky quit during pre-production. The Logan of LOGAN is more in line with other Mangold protagonists like Sylvester Stallone's Freddy Heflin in COP LAND and Christian Bale's one-legged Civil War vet in 3:10 TO YUMA: sad, bitter, burned-out and beaten down by life, and generally just going through the motions until something comes along that inspires them to give a shit again.
LOGAN takes place in 2029, years after nearly all of the X-Men have died off and 25 years since the last mutant was born. James Howlett, aka Logan (Hugh Jackman) is a disheveled alcoholic dividing his time between driving a limo in El Paso and scoring seizure medication for Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who's holed up an an abandoned factory in the outskirts of a small Mexican town just south of the border. Now 90, Xavier is suffering from a degenerative brain disease that causes him to lose control of his telepathic powers without proper meds, which are getting more expensive by the day. The pair share their living space with albino mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant), who takes care of housekeeping duties like Felix Unger to Logan's Oscar Madison. Logan is contacted by Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez), who wants him to drive young Laura (Dafne Keen) to North Dakota where she's to meet some other young mutants and cross the border into Canada. Logan is incredulous, as no mutants have been born in nearly three decades, but when Gabriella is killed and he realizes that Laura is being targeted by a heavily-armed security force with cybernetic right arms led by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), he ends up on the run with Xavier and the child in tow. Pierce is employed by Transigen, a company ostensibly conducting pediatric cancer research at a medical facility in Mexico, but they're really breeding a new strain of mutant using the DNA of X-Men like Logan. Judging from her retractable knuckle blades, Xavier immediately concludes that Logan's DNA was used to father Laura. With Pierce abducting an ailing Caliban and forcing him to use his powers to track them down, Logan, Xavier, and Laura form a tentative three-generational family unit, with Xavier reminding the misanthropic Logan "This is what life looks like...people love each other...you should take notice."
The characters are the key component of LOGAN, but it doesn't skimp on the action. The trio has several run-ins with Pierce and his employer, chief villain and asshole geneticist Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), there's a terrific car chase, and there's a couple appearances by Wolverine clone X-24, also played by Jackman. The level of violence in LOGAN is sure to surprise even the most jaded moviegoers: between the two of them, Logan and Laura stab, skewer, slice, dice, decapitate, and disembowel everyone Transigen sends their way, tallying up a body count that makes John Wick look like a hesitant rookie. While it meets the action content requirement, LOGAN is about the people, and even though it functions as a standalone work, this is a film that couldn't have been made had Jackman and Stewart not had so much experience with these characters. They've inhabited these characters through multiple installments and the audience knows them so well over the last 17 years that the more serious approach carries significant emotional weight. Like Clint Eastwood's reformed killer William Munny in UNFORGIVEN, Jackman's Logan subverts expectations and serves as a genre commentary on itself (in addition to Logan being an outcast who has no place in the world, there's additional western motifs that Mangold drives home by showing Xavier and Laura watching SHANE on TV). Logan is dying from the slow poisoning caused by the adamantium that makes up his claws and runs through his body. He knows the end is near for him, Xavier, and Caliban and that when they die, the X-Men die with them, even if they live on in the "bullshit" comic books that Logan sees wherever he goes. The bond that he and Xavier form with Laura gives him a reason to live, a reason to do what's right before the lights go out on a life that's seen too much pain and death. Of course, doing so requires doling out more pain and death, and therein lies the conundrum. Jackman and Stewart are so good in LOGAN that they warrant legitimate Oscar consideration, though it'll never happen. They're matched by an impressive Keen in her movie debut. She has no dialogue for the first 3/4 of the film and instead relies on facial expressions and the most penetrating, "don't fuck with me" side-eye you'll ever see. This kid has an intimidating look to her that goes way past "resting bitchface." LOGAN is an instant classic of its kind, the most extreme superhero bloodbath since PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, the best serious genre offering since THE DARK KNIGHT, and a thoughtful and often profoundly moving drama that looks at the last days of dying legend. One of the best films of 2017.
(US - 2014) Written and directed by Scott Frank. Cast: Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, David Harbour, Boyd Holbrook, Adam David Thompson, Brian "Astro" Bradley, Mark Consuelos, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Sebastian Roche, Eric Nelsen, Maurice Compte, Leon Addison Brown, Danielle Rose Russell. (R, 115 mins)
Based on a 1992 novel by Lawrence Block, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES marks the second attempt at bringing Block's Matt Scudder character to the big screen. A disgraced, alcoholic NYPD cop who gets sober and becomes an unlicensed, off-the-books private detective, Scudder has been the protagonist of 17 Block novels dating back to 1976. 1986's barely-released 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE, based on Block's 1982 novel, starred Jeff Bridges as a Los Angeles-based Scudder and was the final and arguably worst film of the great Hal Ashby (HAROLD AND MAUDE, BEING THERE). Ashby was nearing the end of a cocaine-fueled decline (he died in 1988) and completely ignored the script by Oliver Stone and future ROAD HOUSE poet laureate David Lee Henry, which itself had little to do with Block's book. The cast, headed by Bridges, Rosanna Arquette, and a pre-UNTOUCHABLES Andy Garcia, was encouraged to improvise and appear to be directing themselves, and the film features the single worst "showdown at an abandoned warehouse"--with Bridges and Garcia shouting at one another from opposite ends of a warehouse that appears to be the length of five football fields--in movie history. Maybe the whole thing was meant to be a goof, but at any rate, Ashby was fired immediately after shooting wrapped and the film was edited without his involvement, not that it would've mattered by that point. There's a reason it's taken nearly 30 years for someone to attempt a new Scudder adaptation: displaying approximately eight million ways to kill Ashby's career, 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE really is that bad.
NEESON!
Fortunately, in the hands of director and veteran screenwriter Scott Frank and star Liam Neeson, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES is a major improvement. Frank scripted the Elmore Leonard adaptations GET SHORTY (1995) and OUT OF SIGHT (1998) for Barry Sonnenfeld and Steven Soderbergh, respectively, and made his directorial debut with the sleeper gem THE LOOKOUT (2007). Frank updates the novel's setting to 1999, presumably in order to retain Block's NYC flavor and Scudder's pavement-pounding investigative techniques. It also allows some references to what was considered a looming catastrophe with Y2K, with Neeson's Scudder expressing an apprehension about using computers and cell phones, and to a NYC that had no idea 9/11 was on the horizon. A CGI'd Twin Towers are seen near the end, and when one of the villains smugly tells the other "People are afraid of the wrong things," it's no accident that Frank immediately cuts to a jet preparing its descent against the NYC skyline. Like the recent THE DROP, TOMBSTONES makes excellent use of areas of the Five Boroughs that have remained relatively unaltered amidst the last quarter century of changes to NYC, and it really captures the gritty essence of the kind of Big Apple thriller that was commonplace in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Given its grim subject matter, it wouldn't take much tweaking to turn TOMBSTONES into the kind of Times Square grindhouse exploitation film whose title would've adorned marquees of 42nd Street theaters way back when.
NEESON!
After a brief 1991-set prologue that shows a hard-drinking Scudder gunning down three shitbags who shoot up a cop bar, Frank cuts to 1999 as an eight-years-sober Scudder lives a solitary life in a small apartment and attends daily AA meetings. He's approached by recovering junkie and Desert Storm vet Peter Kristo (Boyd Holbrook), who knows he deals in off-the-radar private investigation. Peter's brother Kenny (Dan Stevens) is a high-end drug trafficker whose wife was kidnapped the night before. Kenny paid the $400,000 ransom but they killed her anyway, sending him all over the city to make sure he didn't have the cops in tow, ending up in a run-down neighborhood where he finds the pieces of his wife's body tied up in trash bags in the trunk of an abandoned car. Given his source of income, Kenny doesn't want to go to the feds, so Scudder reluctantly accepts the job to the tune of $40,000. In his microfiche research at a library, Scudder encounters homeless teenager TJ (Brian "Astro" Bradley) making use of the newfangled internet. Scudder finds links between the murder of Kenny's wife and that of numerous other killings going back to 1997, starting with a DEA agent whose body was found in a similar dismembered fashion in a pond at Green-Wood Cemetery. Other victims have ties to major NYC drug traffickers, and Scudder comes to believe that the killers are rogue or former DEA agents ("Why former?" Scudder is asked, to which he replies "Because they're insane"). When the young daughter (Danielle Rose Russell) of a Russian drug boss (Sebastian Roche) is abducted, Scudder and his eager apprentice TJ, along with the Kristo brothers, take action.
Neeson.
A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES is a more subdued, low-key vehicle for Neeson, who still kicks ass, but doesn't do it in a TAKEN sort-of way. As played by Neeson, Scudder is appropriately tired and weary and unable to mask a sense of overwhelming regret over a tragedy that haunts him nearly every waking moment. It's unlike Bridges' portrayal, which, once his Scudder was sober, was more along the lines of a laid-back, affably smart-assed SoCal beach bum-type, not exactly "Dude"-like, but pointed in that direction. Given that there isn't much in the way of big-name co-stars, it's surprising how much of an ensemble piece TOMBSTONES becomes once Scudder and his piecemeal crew take shape. There's also a brief but memorable performance by Olafur Darri Olafsson as a creepy cemetery groundskeeper who became a reluctant accessory to the killers, a pair of truly vile, loathsome sadists played by--it's not a spoiler, as their identities aren't kept secret--David Harbour and Adam David Thompson (the trailer does stupidly reveal Olafsson's fate, thereby depriving anyone who's seen it of one of the film's most unexpected and shocking moments). The film is superbly directed throughout, with some well-done 1990s ambience and period detail, effective framing of actors and structures, and the greatest use of Donovan's "Atlantis" this side of GOODFELLAS. Between "Atlantis" here and "Hurdy-Gurdy Man" kicking off David Fincher's ZODIAC, it's obvious that Donovan tunes make the most chilling accompaniment to serial killing. The throwback flavor of films like TOMBSTONES and THE DROP are a hopeful indication that these sorts of adult-aimed dramas are making a bit of a comeback. This won't have the mass appeal of a TAKEN, but it's a nice compromise between the action hero and serious actor sides of its immensely popular star.
