Previous Wolverine screen outings suddenly feel a little fluffy and domesticated next to the feral rage of Logan. This is the adamantium-clawed assault of a movie that fans have been waiting for all along.
But just as the film-making starts to feel legitimately dangerous, the subject, Hugh Jackman’s troubled mutant, is starting to lose his punch. Something is poisoning him from the inside; it takes longer to recover from each new bout with the forces that would see his kind wiped from the face of the earth.
Once again, Wolverine unwillingly finds himself in a protector role. He is nursemaid to both the ailing Professor X (neat sound design captures the effect that brain disease has on the world’s most dangerous mind).
And to Laura (Dafne Keen, compelling), a child in whom he recognises the best and worst of himself. Perhaps the main question is why Laura speaks Spanish while the other children raised alongside her in Mexico speak American-accented English. However, it’s not enough to derail the story.
The score is particularly well used – from the woozy, barbiturate-blunted music of the first act, to the rumbling pulse of threat that drives us through the second two, it meshes brilliantly with the sound design. Tightly plotted and ruthlessly bloodthirsty, this is an impressive return to form for the X-Men franchise.
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