I went to see the movie Logan tonight and liked it. This strikes me as one of the best Western genre films though set in a sci-fi future. While I thought all Westerns had a dog in them, I can’t recall any. Did Gunsmoke, the Rifleman, or Bonanza? But there are always mad-dog villains in a shoot-em-up. The anti-hero kills the desperados, saves the girl, avenges wrongs and gets shot up in the process.
When the lead is an aging, sick, boozing old Wolverine – I still am trying to figure out HOW this came to be — instead of a perpetually healing Wolverine, the director seems to recall the best traditions of old Westerns. Doc Holliday, sick with Tuberculosis is still the fastest gun, when he is alongside the Earp brothers against the Clantons; Clint Eastwood’s Will Muny in the Unforgiven, unleashes long-dormant fury on the sheriff who killed his old partner. The Stranger with No Name, exacts brutal and deserved justice on various outlaws and corrupt townsfolk in spaghetti westerns.
I did not follow – I haven’t read comics in fifty years – why Wolverine was now scarred and slow-healing, and keeping a low profile while hiding Caliban and a declining Charles Xavier in Mexico. When up against the evil corporate thugs, an old junkyard dog still has fight in him. Caliban though tortured is holding out. Wolverine, when pushed, is eviscerating his antagonists and trying to determine who the mercenaries are after– him, Xavier, or the child mutant. This lab-raised waif can more than hold her own with her adamantium claws and lightening quick fighting ability. The plot is a father-daughter story, a gunfight with mercenaries, and battles against injustice, and even bad hombres pressuring farmers over water rights. The conclusion leads us to believe in Hope.
It's a Dog's Life 