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Writer/director James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line) returns to the X-Men franchise after 2013’s The Wolverine and serves up a highly satisfying conclusion for its centerpiece hero. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart return as Logan/Wolverine and Charles/Professor X, respectively. They are joined by young Dafne Keen, playing a child mutant in a 2029 future where mutants have gone nearly extinct. But military-scientist baddies are hot on her tail, leaving it up to the boozing, suicidal Logan and the dying Charles to look after her while evading bullets and other experimental weapons.

Logan is unlike any other X-Men movie you’ve ever seen. It’s a movie that, by any standard in Hollywood, should never have been made. It’s sad, bleak, fatalistic, and hyper-violent. Children are both the perpetrators and victims of on-screen violence here. You see Wolverine literally chop people’s heads off here, and you also see him ram his spikes through more skulls than I could count. Logan may be in the superhero genre, but it is NOT for children. Thanks to the success of Deadpool, maybe we’ll be able to enjoy more mainstream offerings of this calibre.

I brought a lot with me to Logan. I always do with the X-Men movies. I relate on a deep level to the idea of mutant freaks banding together for protection, forming a surrogate family when blood relations let them down, daring to aid a world that doesn’t appreciate them. My heart has always soared with respect for characters like these — characters whose tragic experiences could easily have damaged them beyond all repair. But they find a sense of purpose and the will to move on in a positive, more selfless way.

But Logan sees them in their twilight years, railing against mortality and an ever-increasing sense of global doom. Logan acknowledges the stark socio-economic and political realities of 2017. The film’s 2029 setting is a direct result of our current reality, and it isn’t pretty. It contributes to an oppressive environment from which Wolverine desperately wants to disappear — through booze, through drugs, and possibly with the help of an adamantium bullet he carries in his pocket at all times. Having followed Wolverine and the Professor for seventeen years makes Logan all the more bittersweet. It’s not easy watching these characters succomb to bitter reality in a film that exudes finality from its marketing campaign all the way through to its poetic final shot.

Don’t bring the kids, but do bring a hankie.

With Richard E. Grant and Eriq La Salle, and a solid score by Marco Beltrami.