By Adam Miklas
Staff Writer

After the first solo Wolverine movie, “X-men Origins: Wolverine” turned out to be really bad and the second one, “The Wolverine” was good until the last act, we now have the last Wolverine solo movie with Hugh Jackman in his final performance as the titular character. So how does the final Wolverine solo movie hold up?

Really well.

In this film, most of mutant kind is dead. Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, is now a drunk limo driver who makes ends meet just to get medicine for Charles Xavier, played by Patrick Stewart.

Professor X has a brain disease, and Logan’s healing factor is nowhere near as strong as it used to be, so now he is slowly dying too.

Things don’t get much better when they have to take care of a girl known as Laura, played by Dafne Keen, while some shady people are after her.

Logan, Charles and Laura now need to work together to escape the company that is after Laura.

This movie is not like many superhero movies out nowadays. In fact, it doesn’t even feel like a superhero movie.

It’s more like a drama or character study that just happens to have mutants in it. I think that this works to the movie’s advantage, though.

It shows why Logan doesn’t care about anything anymore and shows why he needs to change, and it does it well.

You really feel what he is going through, and it makes certain events very emotional, even more so if you’ve been watching the other “X-Men” films since the beginning.

You can feel his pain at points and understand the stuff he does and why he does it. Jackman’s acting can be attributed to this as well, since at this point he has mastered the character after playing it for roughly 17 years.

The acting is very well done in this movie, with special mention going to Keen who, in only her second movie she’s ever acted in and being much younger than the veteran actors in this film, manages to hold her own and even outshine her elders.

There are times where she even steals the show.

The villains are not particularly memorable, which is a flaw in the movie, but they do get some great lines from time to time.

I should mention that since this film is more of a drama than a straight-up comic film, that there are more talking scenes than action scenes.

It really takes its time to show what the characters are going through and how they feel, sometimes saying it outright, sometimes just showing it, which is great.

The slow moments are done well and sometimes can draw people in more than the action scenes.

The character development is spot on.

With the exception of one moment that seems to solve itself, which I will not say since it is a spoiler, the character development feels very smooth and natural.

It’s not just that they become better people as the film goes on, but more of an accurate portrayal of how people in real life would change after experiencing such situations, which makes it much more natural and easier to sympathize with.

However, there is still plenty of action, and it earns that R rating.

Blood is spewed out everywhere, limbs fly off and the brutality of the fights feels like nothing we have ever seen in an “X-men” film.

This can lead to great action set pieces, especially in a scene in the middle of the film. If this stuff doesn’t bother you, it can lead to laughing fits at how violent it is.

The choreography is also what makes these scenes so great. The constant hard hits and flipping around adds to the visceral violence.

This movie isn’t perfect, though.

The slow pace can bother some people who only want to see the violence, the goal in this film isn’t explained too well and without going into spoilers, an adversary that appears later on isn’t foreshadowed well and it feels like they shoe-horned him into the movie.

He’s not handled well.

If you like “X-Men” films, you’ll probably like this.

If you like well-written, well-acted, emotional drama films, you’ll enjoy this.

If you like blood and gore, you’ll like this.

However, if you like the superhero films with tons of funny moments, huge set pieces, simple characters and a big CGI action moment in the last act, this is not that kind of movie. But it is a great movie nonetheless and a great sendoff to Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine.

Email Adam at:
amiklas@live.esu.edu