New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

The script seems to suffer from the studio tent-pole film writing process of planning all of the action set pieces beforehand and attempting to write dialogue and scenes around them. I understand that this is the preferred way to budget an uber-expensive film these days, but one still hopes these cost-saving measures won't come at the expense of commitment to quality storytelling and arc. I'm imagining a story and character development meeting at the studio. Decisions on whether or not to stray from canon are being bandied about and discussed. Important questions are being mulled over concerning how exactly the relationship between Logan and Victor shall be defined. How will Logan leave Team X? What will happen to Kayla? In the midst of all this some MBA from Wharton masquerading oxymoronically as a "creative executive" pushily interrupts: "Do whatever you want as long as he gets to single-handedly take on a helicopter. Cuz, you know, Hueys and Blackhawks don't come cheap." Admittedly, great comic book movie adaptations can be made this way if Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2 are any indication. Unfortunately, this is just not one of those cases.

And it's a shame too, because with the exception of Will i Am, an estimable cast has been assembled. In addition to Jackman and Schreiber, I especially enjoyed Danny Huston's old school style portrayal of Stryker. Not at any moment does Huston play him like he's a big-bad summer movie villain. He's merely the guy who wants something markedly different from just about everyone else around him – and he wants it badly. I enjoyed his approach to making Stryker truly human and not merely some Dr. Strangelove/General Patton freakshow type mashup. Lynn Collins has a pleasing, lovely countenance about her and it exudes in everything I've seen her do to date. She capably utilizes her soft, husky voice and moves with a quiet subtle grace. She provides a sense of calm in the storm of Logan's life and she's his perfect complement.

It's a shame that Ryan Reynolds (William Wade) and Taylor Kitsch (Gambit) don't have more screen time as they're both fun and enjoyable, but this film's just not big enough for everyone in it. The good thing is that within the genre, it's more than probable that we could see these characters again.

I feel like Hood perhaps bit off more than he could chew. I loved the look and feel of the opening montage showcasing Logan and Victor over the years fighting war after war. And there's a great ménage a trois fight scene atop a nuclear silo. He was able to coax yeoman's work from his stable of actors. I'd wager that Jackman was able to reach even newer depths with Logan this fourth time around. But origin stories can be tricky. It's not easy balancing the providing of necessary exposition to the audience while acknowledging the inherent expectation of that same audience when well-known and loved characters are involved. There's always a risk of alienating both the existing fans of the characters and newcomers to that particular world. All of these considerations must be administered to while simultaneously providing all the wham-bam gee-whiz action sequences audiences have come to associate with this genre. It's difficult but it's not impossible. There were huge problems with pacing and tempo. Things would start to get going good and all of a sudden the story would stop moving ahead and any excitement or tension which had been built was quickly dissipated. I left feeling like the experience as a whole would have been much more satisfying if the story was allowed to play out in a more organic fashion.

Continued:       1       2       3