“Logan” is both everything a movie about Wolverine should be and a heartfelt goodbye to the superhero movies of yesteryear.

In the year 2029 super-powered mutants are all but extinct, with no naturally born mutants surfacing in the past 25 years. Logan (Hugh Jackman) hung up the cowl of Wolverine decades prior and now spends his time working as an off-brand Uber driver. The funds from said job are used to illegally purchase prescription drugs for an ailing Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).

His rough, albeit simple existence is interrupted when a young mutant girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) is given to Logan with instructions to deliver her to GPS coordinates found in an old X-men comic book.

This marks Hugh Jackman’s final film playing Wolverine, and he’s going out with a gory R-rated bang. There’s not a hint of milquetoast political commentary or the watered-down action of the last four PG-13 X-films.

Wolverine’s feral, violent attacks are perfectly represented in high-def bloody detail this time around. Limbs come off, blood sprays and people are stabbed, and it’s amazing.

The action scenes of “Logan” are so good they make up for every PG-13 half-assed stab or quick cut to hide any actual violence previous Wolverine fight sequences might have had.

He’s old, he’s constantly in pain, but he’s still the Wolverine.

The X-men franchise has led a hard life, putting out a couple of okay films atop a pile of absolute garbage over the last 14 years since a genuinely entertaining, quality Fox-owned Marvel movie hit the screen with “X2: X-men United. At this point my X-men marathon list consists of “X2” followed by “Logan” and then “Deadpool” to lighten the mood.

“Logan” is, at its core, a Western. The audience is sitting down to watch an old hero out for one last ride, knowing full well he’s probably not going to come back. The true nature of what makes a hero is poked at throughout the film, the pure part of Logan’s psyche fighting with the pained, angry portion of his personality to motivate his doing the right things.

Jackman presents a character who doesn’t just do the right thing because the script says so, he does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes he’ll stray from that path, but in the end he’s a hero who does the heroic thing right up to the tear-jerking end.

Here’s hoping this film’s runaway success shows both Fox and Marvel the world’s moviegoing audience is ready for adult treatment of our modern myths to compliment the goofiness of an attractive guy beating people up with a metal Frisbee and a guy who gains weight when angry.

(5 / 5)