Logan

James Mangold’s “Logan” is the conclusion to a trilogy centered on Wolverine, the bone claw spouting anti-hero of Marvel’s “X-Men” universe, and those films are part of an even more expansive “X-Men” movie universe that begin all the way back in 2000. This reviewer has not seen an “X-Men” movie since 2006, and did not see either film leading up to “Logan”, which is a necessary disclosure regarding my mostly ahistorical perspective of this franchise. In that same light, however, I can also state that not knowing anything much about what came before does not prevent enjoyment or understanding of Mangold’s film. It does not because Mangold builds backstory almost exclusively with mood, engineering a palpable pall, one hanging over the entire film through the weariness of its principal characters and the dreariness of its establishing locales. He is also helped immensely by Hugh Jackman’s star turn, one that admirably resists starriness every step of the way.

The movie opens with Wolverine – née Logan (Hugh Jackman) – down and out and sleeping in the back of the limousine he now drives just to get by. He is woken by a few thieves trying to the lift tires. With a comically exhausted countenance, Logan confronts them and they promptly shoot him. He does not then so much roar back to life, on account of his unique accelerated healing process, as reluctantly rise. Rather than flee, the thieves push him and so Logan reveals the bone claws and has at it, ripping these guys to shreds, as Mangold delicately yet forcefully turns the tone of the scene from humor to terror. And while sympathy is not exactly elicited for the thieves, neither is there much empathy engendered for Logan, as Jackman works hard to actually put you off, transforming a rudimentary action scene into something more akin to psychological horror. Logan, you think watching this, is messed up.

Whereas violence in superhero movies is so often lyrically abstract, here, as it is elsewhere, it is grisly, something not to cheer for but to recoil from, which is also what Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), once Wolverine’s caretaker and the overseer of so many mutants, is doing with his own superpower, telepathic abilities that have become dangerous and uncontrollable without medication on account of seizures. While once they sought to help the world, now they hide out from it near the Mexican border, in an abandoned smelting plant that looks shot out, like something from a “Mad Max”-ish apocalyptic wasteland, mirroring the fact that mutants have been removed from the bloodstream, leaving Logan and Xavier as the last of their kind.

Or are they? Something, of course, is required to trigger the erosion of that stasis and it is a little girl, Laura (Dafne Keen), in the care of Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez) who seeks out Logan to ask for his help in ferrying Laura to safety. That is because Laura is a mutant too, one created by the corporate villains that emerge as the film’s lone weak spot, a mysterious corporation acting out for all the usual reasons. They might have done better to remain faceless, existing as the frightening Other, like an early sequence when they descend on the smelting plant, their weaponry and tactical gear emitting the distinct air of a SWAT team descending on illegal immigrants.

It is no emblematic accident that “Logan” begins near the Mexican border. Even the early films in the franchise connected the plight of immigrants, legal or otherwise, with mutants, though “Logan” is less interested in spelling it out with speechifying, just letting it exist on the periphery, alluding to the idea of these actual Americans who want to get somewhere better. In “Logan” that somewhere better becomes Eden, some sort of vaguely defined mutant haven in North Dakota where Laura yearns to escape. Its on-the-nose name suggests make-believe, and that seems to be confirmed when Logan stumbles across this very Eden referenced in one of Laura’s X-Men comics. And while this is intended to arouse suspense in the road trip that the three of them undertake (is it really there?), it also speaks to how Mangold seeks to inject a comic with life.

To do so, Mangold samples George Stevens’s lauded 1953 western “Shane”, going so far as to include a middle passage where Logan, Laura and Xavier briefly hole up with the Munsons whose family owned farm is under constant threat from some corporate heavies, giving the impression that not much has changed since the days of the Wyoming Territory. And while Logan turns heavily on the dynamic between its titular character and the young mutant in his charge, eliciting obvious shades of Shane and the young boy who idolizes him, the most interesting tension exists between Logan and himself. This is emblemized in the film’s most pertinent twist, essentially forcing Logan to confront his own lost youth. In the end, his character’s deeds may be noble, but Jackman rarely evinces nobility, hardly allowing Logan to even warm up to Laura, and eyeing his own past with equal parts bitterness, confusion and rage. It’s not the sort of heroism we are accustomed to with our superheroes, but it’s definitely real.

Prisoners

There is an arresting visual moment in “Prisoners” when we literally see the gray raindrops that have been present essentially since the film’s grave inciting incident begin transform into wet snowflakes, fall giving way to winter right before our very eyes. It is not unlike an earlier moment when this thriller’s already unhinged premise seems to transform into something so sensationalist it jumps the shark. It would be nice if film could simply exist in a vacuum I suppose, but the recurring real world situation that kept populating my mind was Cleveland and the abduction of those three girls and the unspeakable horrors inflicted upon them. How can we know what anyone is truly capable of and what terror unknowingly lurks behind every door? This is the unsettling truth “Prisoners” grasps and throttles – for better or for worse – home.

A pair of families gather for Thanksgiving. All seems normal until the youngest daughter of each family suddenly goes missing. When they do, the rain begins to pour and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has never not solved a case, shows up. Speculation on an abductor centers around a musty motor home where the two young girls were seen playing. The motor home belongs to Alex (Paul Dano), whose glasses, hair and complexion are like Thriller Suspect 101. Alas, Alex, possessing an IQ of 10, can hardly mumble a sentence. After the requisite holding period he is released and returns home with his Aunt (Melissa Leo). Loki has his doubts about Alex’s innocence and so does Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), the blue collar father of the younger of the two missing girls.

Convinced Alex is responsible for the abduction and maddened by what he views as police inaction, Keller acts by abducting Alex, locking him up in an abandoned house and relentlessly torturing him in an effort to unearth the truth. This is not a spoiler if you have seen the preview nor is it really a spoiler if you haven’t, for this “twist” occurs fairly early and “Prisoners” is – to quote its own metaphor – a maze that far exceeds any single reveal. The film, in fact, is a good two-and-a-half hours. Overlong? It is, but I dare say director Denis Villeneuve’s intention is to actively impress upon us that length – just when we feel the road to whodunit? straightening out, we hit another curve.

“Prisoners” is the sort of the film that allows quality actors to delve deeply into the finer points of characterization. Jackman turns a sickly shade of pale and purposely plays at one note – thunderous. Gyllenhaal outfits his character with twitchy eyes, blinking repeatedly and rapidly in such a way that suggests they have been made to see more than they can believe (and says as much if not more than the stock introductory scene of his Thanksgiving dinner at a Chinese restaurant). So too does he come equipped with the teensiest tattoo of a cross on his thumb which plays directly off Keller’s own fascination with faith – the cross dangling around his neck and from his rearview mirror. Faith hangs over the whole film like its low skies, often fairly insistently, but often people of faith are very insistent in theirs.

Gyllenhaal and Jackman are, of course, not alone in the cast, joined by the adept Viola Davis as well as Terrence Howard – both of which comprise the couple of the second missing girl – and Maria Bello as Keller’s wife. Skilled as this trio is, they are primarily – interestingly (curiously?) – relegated to the sideline. Bello spends most of the movie zonked out on sleeping pills. Howard (sporting an excellent homage to the Cosby Sweater in his first scene) and Davis are meant to function as the conscience to Keller, but his conscience seems of little consequence and so they are more or less moved aside. The push and pull of Keller and Loki is the movie’s center.

The ethics at play in “Prisoners” are not convenient, and for that reason it is able to rise above its genre restrictions and requisite red herrings (particularly in the frustrating form of one character that just gets dropped in to distract the narrative). Ultimately its most fascinating theme is that of Keller’s absolutism. Faith, let’s face it, can be just as frightening as reassuring, and there is underlying commentary here about the modern day misappropriation of faith – I’m Right/You’re Wrong/No In Between.

That is what makes the end a puzzle. It's less ambiguous, I would argue, than a choose-your-own adventure, a modern-day Lady or the Tiger? Villeneuve is saying the question of what happens after the final cut is one not to be lightly considered, and not for him to presume to set himself up as the one person able to answer it. And so he leaves it with all of us: should one be made to pay for their sins or be left to wrestle with them in their own mind?