Take tissues. You'll need them. I cried twice.
That's about all I can say without getting spoilery, so if you don't want spoilers, don't read on from here.
Despite his apparent immortality and healing factor, Logan's grown old. The adamantium inside him is slowly poisoning him... he's not healing like he used to, he's coughing up blood. He knows there's nothing to be done. He seems to have given up hope; the only reason he's still hanging on is that there is someone depending on him... Charles Xavier.
And if Logan is old, Xavier is even older. How do you manage the world's most powerful telepath when that telepath develops a brain disorder that causes seizures and crippling pain to everyone around him? With drugs and shielding, but for a man whose brain is classified as a weapon of mass destruction, even that isn't enough. Little bits are still leaking around the edges.
The relationship between Logan and Charles is tragi-comic, with rough and at times angry banter flying between the two of them, and yet it is apparent that there is love, too.
(BIG SPOILER)
My first tears fell when Logan's did, at Xavier's graveside. Logan doesn't want to carry on, wants to give up and lose himself in the grief and any number of bottles, but he's got one last problem Xavier left him with.
Laura.
Dafne Keen is an incredible young actress. She plays the traumatised, terrified yet rage-filled young mutant with amazing passion. Laura is unpredictable, even more so than Logan, and every time she was on the screen I found myself unable to look at anyone else. Her strength of will is such that even Logan finds himself going along with her plans, very much against his will. If Dafne Keen doesn't win a whole bunch of awards for this performance, there is no justice in the world.
The rest of the cast is absolutely stellar; Boyd Holbrook was a breakout star in Narcos and he has a juicy villain's role to sink his teeth into here. I could wish we'd seen more of Richard E. Grant because he's a wonderful actor, I felt he was rather underutilised here, and in a movie that's 141 minutes long giving him a few more lines would surely have been worthwhile.
Logan is easily the darkest movie in the X-Men universe to date, and the bloodiest. There are some seriously gory scenes and I won't be taking my sons to see it - they're 10 and 7 and have seen all the other movies in the 'verse except Deadpool, but I think this one steps over that line of being a bit too much. It's also the most powerful, emotional movie in the series to date, by a long way. As the swansong of both Hugh Jackman and Sir Patrick Stewart in the roles they have made their own over the last decade and a half, it is truly a magnificent, fitting farewell.
Go see Logan as soon as you can. But don't forget to take those tissues.
