The Top Ten Movies of 2017 – #03 – Logan

Rory Cashin

“Nature made me a freak. Man made me a weapon. And God made it last too long.”

Welcome to JOE’s countdown of the Ten Best Movies of 2017. We’ll be counting them down one-by-one, with the #1 spot revealed on New Year’s Eve.

The #03 spot goes to… LOGAN

Irish Release Date: 1 March

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant.

Director: James Mangold

Budget: $97 million

Worldwide Box Office: $617 million

Director James Mangold was the same guy who brought us the incredibly “meh” The Wolverine a few years earlier, so him getting back in the director’s chair didn’t exactly spur on much confidence. However, 20th Century Fox had a series of misfires – the Fantastic Four reboot, X-Men: Apocalypse – so they decided to go down a different route.

Following the critical and commercial smash of Deadpool, they allowed Mangold to reinvent the character of Wolverine for a more adult audience (something we went into great detail for right here) and out the other end came Logan, and finally comic book audiences got the Wolverine movie they’d wanted and deserved since Hugh Jackman first showed up in adamantium claws back in 2000.

Clip via 20th Century Fox

Jackman turns in one of his best performances to date, finally able to give his Logan more emotional layers than just “I forget stuff, and some of that stuff I forget might be me doing bad stuff”. He is tied in with Patrick Stewart’s heartbreaking but at times hilarious Charles Xavier, a man losing control of his own mind due to age, but unfortunately that mind is one of the most powerful weapons on the planet, and he too may have forgotten some horrific things that he has done in the past.

As the plot kicks in and they’re forced on a road-trip with a new mutant (played by the hugely impressive newbie Dafne Keen), one with more than few similar attributes to Logan himself.

The road-trip plot, mixed in with a bit of The Terminator as they are relentless pursued, gives the characters time to reflect on their lives, their mistakes, their lost loves, their friendship for each other, and what their place will be in the future.

So we end up with a fantastically emotional, but still very much action-packed finale to a 17 year long epic, telling us the highs and lows of Logan’s life, all anchored by Jackman.

And anyone who doesn’t shed a tear while watching this is clearly a pod person.

For further reading on our end of year list, check out the following: