Film

Logan

Name: Logan
Genre: Action, Drama, Science Fiction
Released: 2017
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Dafne Keen, Patrick Stewart, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Boyd Holbrook

Logan is the superhero movie for people who don't like superhero movies: a hard, unglamorous western dressed up in claws and metal, about an old man who's outlived his own legend. It's brutal, sad, funny in flashes, and far more interested in mortality than mutation. Rated R and unsentimental about what violence costs, it's for anyone who wants their comic-book heroes to actually feel their age.

TMDb rating

7.8

If you liked this

Children of Men2006

Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian chase film shares Logan's exact shape — a burnt-out man reluctantly escorting a miracle child across a collapsing world, filmed with the same grubby, unglamorous realism and long, unbroken takes of violence.

But The bleakness is relentless and the ending offers little comfort — this is not a film that wants to make you feel better.

Deadpool2016

Same studio, same mutant universe, same R rating, but swung entirely the other direction — gleeful, filthy, breaking the fourth wall every chance it gets. Proof Fox let this world get weird in more than one direction.

But If you loved Logan for its restraint and sorrow, Deadpool's constant jokes might feel like whiplash.

No Country for Old Men2007

The Coens' modern western is the spiritual grandparent of Logan's tone: flat desert light, unstoppable violence, and men who've outlived the moral world they were built for.

But Its ambiguity and lack of closure frustrate viewers who want a clean resolution.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Shane1953

Logan literally screens Shane within the film, and its final scene is a direct, tearful echo of Shane's closing line — this is the text Logan is having a conversation with.

A mysterious gunfighter helps a homestead family and forms a bond with their young son, then rides off wounded into the distance — this is the exact myth Logan is quoting, right down to a boy watching a hero die.

But It's a slow, formal 1950s western with none of the visceral charge of Logan's violence — a stately classic, not a thrill ride.

Hell or High Water2016

A lean, sun-bleached crime drama about men running out of road, with the same weary border-country ache and a lawman closing in who understands his quarry better than he'd like.

But It's quieter and more procedural — there's no claws-out spectacle to break up the slow burn.

True Grit2010

The Coens again, this time with a gruff, damaged gunman reluctantly shepherding a fierce, capable young girl through hostile territory — practically a beat sheet for Logan and Laura, minus the adamantium.

But It's a straight western with none of the sci-fi trappings, and its humour is drier than Logan's.

The Dark Knight Rises2012

Another franchise closer built around a hero too broken and too old to keep doing this, wrestling with what he leaves behind and who deserves to inherit the mantle.

But It's a much bigger, glossier blockbuster — the grime and grief here are set dressing, not the whole point.

Unforgiven1992

Clint Eastwood's own late-career reckoning with violence and legend, playing a gunslinger who thought he'd put his killing days behind him. The lineage from this to Logan is direct and deliberate.

But It's slower and more theatrical than Logan's kinetic brutality — patience required.

The Road2009

Cormac McCarthy's father-and-son survival story trades mutants for a burned-out America, but the exhausted tenderness of a man trying to get a child somewhere safer feels identical.

But It is unrelievedly grim, with almost none of Logan's dark humour to leaven it.

The Wolverine2013no page yet

The direct predecessor, same actor, a lower-key character study about Logan trying and failing to walk away from violence — worth seeing for how much rawer and sadder this film feels by comparison.

But Its middle act sags into standard blockbuster plotting that Logan pointedly avoids.

The Iron Giant1999

Same engine, opposite register: an enormous, dangerous being finds meaning in protecting a kid and pays for it — Logan's ending, replayed in a G-rated key.

An animated fable about a colossal weapon who chooses tenderness over violence to protect a child, ending in the same kind of quiet, chosen sacrifice that closes out Logan — just with all the gore removed.

But It's a family film, gentle where Logan is savage, so the emotional gut-punch lands very differently.

Léon: The Professional1994

Both are built on the same emotional chassis — a weaponised loner, isolated by his own violence, undone by an unlikely paternal bond with a dangerous little girl.

A near-mute killing machine forms a fierce, protective bond with a young girl he's reluctantly taking care of, and it ends the way you fear it will. The Logan-and-Laura dynamic, transplanted into a Parisian hitman thriller.

But Its central relationship reads as more uncomfortable by today's standards, and the violence is pulpier, less mournful.