In 2029, Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is now an old soak whose mutant

abilities are in decline and who makes a living as a chauffeur, boozing to ease the
pain and keeping a low profile in a desert hideout alongside his even older friend
Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). But trouble finds him in the form of a mutant-
hunting mercenary squad searching for a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) with a
very familiar power-set...
?????
When asked what his cinematic influences were for the latest and supposedly final
Wolverine stand-alone movie, director James Mangold reeled off an impressive and
enticing list that included none-more-classic Western Shane, indie-hit heart-warmer
Little Miss Sunshine and Darren Aronofsky's bruising character piece The Wrestler.
Well, he wasn't lying. In fact, Logan owes these three films more than it does the
Mark Millar-penned comic series Old Man Logan, of which this is the loosest of
adaptations.

The overall mood is sombre and elegiac, much like the 1953 Alan Ladd movie; Mangold
(co-writing with Scott Frank and Michael Green) even has one character repeat
Shane's "there's no livin' with a killin''" speech verbatim to true tear-jerking
effect. Logan himself, meanwhile, echoes Mickey Rourke's lumpen, over-the-hill
show-fighter in The Wrestler, being a shadow of his former perfect-killing-machine
self. He still regenerates, but more slowly and painfully, every wound leaving a
scar. He's slower and clumsier, limping and lurching, and even his claws don't
'snikt' neatly like they used to; one's got a bit lazy and started to stick.

Pursued by the kind of shifty, shadowy military-scientific organisation that would

make William Stryker proud, ol' Logan hits the tarmac (in true Little Miss Sunshine
style) with a mute mutant girl named Laura and a cranky old geezer... Namely
Professor Charles Xavier, played with alternating tenderness and profane gusto by
Stewart, who gives his finest turn yet in the role, as Charles battles dementia
with pharmaceuticals. A necessity, given, as Boyd Holbrook's snide cyborg merc puts
it, his brain "is classified as a weapon of mass destruction now".