Logan is a violent and mean bastard. His previous two standalone cinematic outings (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, disgraceful; The Wolverine, acceptable) dodged this fundamental truth in order to secure tickets from everyone and anyone. Logan, billed as the last outing for Hugh Jackman's Canadian anti-superhero Wolverine, embraces it from frame one. Before the opening credits are over, he leaves three tough street punks as vaguely human-looking splotches of soft pink meat because they had the temerity to fuck with the source of his livelihood. It was a scene so viscerally thrilling, so unexpected; me and one other guy couldn't help but break out into spontaneous applause.

So, yeah, Wolverine is specifically courting the adult crowd this time. But -- and this is what makes Logan so special – it's equally emotionally violent. “Emotionally violent” might call to mind some shallow nu-metal music video version of suffering. This is not that. Logan deals with regret, ageing, and familial love (maladjusted though that family might be) with the nuance and conviction of an arthouse movie from a hungry newcomer who's got something to say. The gleefully graphic Logan cuts deepest when the claws are sheathed and its characters get real with themselves and each other.

However, if you're just here to see Logan and his adorable and feral Murder Girl version, Laura (newcomer Dafne Keen, a revelation), waste and maul some motherfuckers in the bloodiest and most satisfying fashion, you'll still dig it. Writer/director James Mangold conveys such a specificity of vision, one that could potentially alienate certain members of the audience. And yet it functions on such a myriad of levels that you could say there's something for everyone. In a final analysis, everyone admires heart and purity and excellence. That's Logan.

The premise, for a film that's the third Wolverine flick and billionth something X-Men flick, is surprisingly simple. The year is 2029 and all that remains of the X-Men, Logan and his mentor turned father figure and now mentally-ill Charles Xavier, are hiding out by the Mexican border with fellow mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant, subtly injecting humour and melancholy). Logan ekes out a living as a chauffeur. Also, the one time hero and legend has entirely succumbed to cynicism and hopelessness. The only dream he dares nurture is that he'll save enough cash to buy a Sunseeker so he and Charles can live out their remaining days by the ocean in peace.

But his dream is upended when he encounters a nurse who's harbouring an experimented on child soldier, Laura. Laura is a manipulation of Logan's DNA (“she's very much like you,” says Charles). The kid-turned-weapon is on the run from vicious mercenaries, and so it's left to an over-the-hill Logan and Charles to find the mission one last time and protect her.

The early sequences with Wolverine as a limo driver are incredibly effective. It's effective because through those sequences we intuitively understand this particular world, so suffused with sadness, without an ounce of exposition. James Mangold's vision of 2029 America is what right now feels like – a society in the infancy of irreversible entropy. There's talk of poisoned water and hideously processed corn. Children who happen to be born with the wrong DNA are routinely violated for the sake of country. And, no shit, there's a Giant Wall by the Mexican border and the ostensible villain is an unscrupulous man named Donald.

The action sequences are a thing of brutal beauty. The lithe cat-like and youthful ferocity of Laura against Jackman's inelegant and tired Wolverine are poignant little visual superhero poems in and of themselves. They're not just thrown in there for the sake of placating with pretty imagery – the action is as urgent and tense as it is hilariously audacious; you've never seen so many creative head-stabbings. And the down-to-earth (mostly down-to-earth) action is consistent with its dirty and mundane settings. Logan is all bars, hotel rooms, farms, the Mexican desert, cars, forests, gas stations -- superhero by way of contemporary Western road movie. If Bukowski or Chandler were given millions of dollars and booze to create a Wolverine movie, I bet it'd be a lot like this.

Another lovely detail – in Logan, X-Men comic books are a thing. It's a cute meta way of addressing where exactly Logan fits in the ouroboros timeline that is the X-Men film series. As in, his previous cinematic adventures all could have taken place inside those comic books and what we're seeing in Logan is the real story for the first time; really, you needn't be familiar with the past X-Men or Wolverine films to understand what's happening here. But to go a little deeper, this surface-y cute detail also serves to inform us as to where Logan's head is at. “This shit is ice-cream for bed-wetters and maybe a quarter of it happened!” he practically screams at Laura, a tragically self-hating rebuke to his legacy as a hero and a human being. So the tension, then, is not whether Logan will die or not (which, as a dramatic device, honestly does not matter) but whether he can find it in himself to hope and believe in some whispered Promise Land for mutants (here called Eden) after living lifetimes that have afforded him little but pain and disappointment.

It's bittersweet to say goodbye to Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart after 16 years of portraying these two iconic X-Men. The X-Men film series has been so inconsistent, it has been such a bumpy ride. But it lead to Logan. I'm thankful we never had it any other way.

5/5 Australian Movie Stars