Some songs and music almost beg to be used for the screen and several years ago, The Devil’s Share episode of Person of Interest used Johnny Cash’s version of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt to devastating effect, the pre-opening credit soundtrack to a vengeful rampage by Jim Caviezel. It was three minutes or so of quite perfect television, a 101 of how to combine every element to great effect.

It’s not clear if film director James Mangold ever saw that episode, but with Logan, he’s essentially collected all those thematic elements together for a final Wolverine movie that has similar emotional power. The same song was used to just as great effect for the trailer of Logan, with Cash’s ‘The Man comes Around…’ playing over the end credits. In between we get to go on a journey that few risk-averse studios would sanction when it comes to their prime mutant money-maker… essentially a swansong that is brutal, bleak and even nihilistic in its approach.

The decision to release a Logan: Noir – to select US cinemas for a one-off presentation and on certain copies of the Blu-ray released in the US this week – does nothing to soften the ragged adamantium edges of a story where the metaphorical and literal gloves comes off. While the likes of the monochrome Sin City trace and rotoscope the comic-book lines of their source material and Warner Bros’ expanding superhero universe does its best to look moody and mean (but all too often merely petulant), Fox and Mangold have simply stripped the Wolverine concept back to its basics.

Yes, the source material is Old Man Logan (Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s dystopian take on an aged Wolverine, their own homage to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven) but – smartly – the production cares less about the world around the corner, leaving many scene-setting aspects in the dust and rear-view mirror and just pivots its story on its characters. All you need to know, narrative-wise, is that Logan’s world went to hell, most of his friends are dead, mutants have largely been wiped out… and the existence he makes with a debilitated Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and mutant-tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant) is about to be disrupted by the arrival of a diminutive young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen) who apparently shares a shared heritage with the berserker.

Stripped even cleaner with the lack of colour, Logan: Noir is not so much ‘enjoyable’ as a masterclass in how to make an audience experience a story. This is not for the uninitiated – the luxury of having the chance to do a ‘final’ story means that you are making it a ‘hard R’ for the party-faithful and existing fan-base, one that don’t need their hand held or every facet explained.

Sharing a momentum and grim fortitude with the likes of acclaimed console game The Last of Us, Hugh Jackman is the backbone of the piece, finally allowed to let his ‘snikt’ hit the fans and is every bit as good as you’d expect. The real revelation is Dafne Keen, the young Weapon X protégé who makes the kind of knock-’em-dead debut we see all too rarely in the action genre (think, perhaps, Chloe Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass and Natalie Portman in Leon). In a role that requires very little dialogue, the young actress totally sells the primal rage of adolescence combined with the lethal qualities of her bloodline. Should Mangold ever feel tempted to show us more of Laura/Dafne, he’d likely find a captive audience.

Patrick Stewart gives us a weathered, dementia-driven Charles Xavier that’s simultaneously sad and noble, a performance honed by the Yorkshireman’s work on the stage and Boyd Holbrook makes an entertaining villain, leading the hunt for Logan and his new charge. Stephen Merchant, more usually to be found as the butt of Ricky Gervais’ jokes, is almost unrecognisable as the albino Caliban, though his dry, acerbic tone remains intact.

There’s an argument to be made that the film is too bleak and there’s no doubt that it completely upturns the hopeful ending given by the X-Men: Days of Future Past epilogue. Some sequences (including those with the Munson family, with whom the fugitives take brief sanctuary) could be lost entirely, making the running time even sleeker. Equally true, it wastes the talents of Richard E. Grant who appears at random points to give some back-story exposition but is completely surplus to requirements.

But these are niggles. Logan – and particularly the Logan: Noir version – may not be wholly perfect but the film is a reminder that while the likes of the late Sam Peckinpah and even Clint Eastwood have largely seen their work swallowed up by day-player directors who emulate rather than innovate… there are still diamonds in the rough, wire in the blood and adamantium in the bone if you care to look.

Verdict: Mangold, Jackman and Cash do indeed make us hurt, but it’s never felt as good.  9/10

John Mosby

UK audiences missed out on the brief cinematic release of the ‘Noir’ version and the lucky American audiences also get the full blu-ray release more quickly, on shelves now – but Logan: Noir will feature on the HMV steelbook release of the feature film set to hit UK shelves in July, along with deleted scenes.