Logan: 15 Most Brutal Moments That Earned Its R-Rating
It's going to be particularly difficult to watch this one again...
For all of Logan's amazing moments, it is a particularly draining experience for its audience. It is emotionally devastating but wholly satisfying, but the violence and the pessimistic tone make it a particularly difficult rewatch. If it wasn't for the majesty of the performances and the excellent cinematography, you might class it immediately as a one and out sort of film.
But even in the more disgusting, more hyper-violent moments, there is some artistry. Given the mostly unprecedented freedom of an R-rating to play with (at least in X-Men movie history), James Mangold embraced the true nature of the classification. This is no soft R - it barely even qualifies as a conventional hard R: it exists on a different plane entirely.
Mangold's greatest film to date (only now pushing out the wonderful Cop Land), Logan is a mesmerising slow tango of the kind of violence even Tarantino would wince at, shudderingly impactful and as gory as they come. Sure, it's an artisanal achievement in film-making (in itself stunning for a populist genre like this), but it also quite geniously exists in space between blockbuster and exploitation, one clawed foot on each pillar.
And rather than seeing the dreaded R as an impediment, there are moments in the film that prove Logan wears its classification proudly on one blood-soaked sleeve...