Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has had a turbulent ride over the past 17 years. He’s been beaten, magnetized, de-powered and even sent through time in a career spanning eight of the nine X-Men films and while he’s had some great moments, something’s always held him back – He’s never been featured in an R-rated film. That’s not to say that a good PG-13 film can’t be spun for a violent anti-hero like Wolverine, us horror fans can definitely attest to that, but when paired with an incredible script and a no-holds-barred attitude that R rating is icing on the cake for Logan the newest and seemingly last movie starring the anti-hero.

Logan‘s intro immediately sets a tone of desperation that nearly every other hero movie, even the one where Logan loses his healing factor, has ever come close to achieving. The happy future we saw at the end of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past is no more. Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, along with seemingly all of its students is gone. The once great Wolverine is an alcoholic limo driver who keeps an Dementia-afflicted Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) hidden away under the care of Caliban (Stephen Merchant) inside a fallen-over water tower in the Mexican desert just over the border. Curiously, Logan is also aging. He’s not healing from injuries either and he’s clearly sick. Every one of our heroes is at the end of their rope.

That’s why when a nurse named Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez) hunts down Logan and pleads with him to take her daughter, Laura, to a mythical Mutant safe haven called Eden in North Dakota, you can empathize with him for immediately turning her down. It’s not long until Donald Pierce shows up looking for her, and Wolverine is forced back into the hero seat he’s far from equipped to be in.

Director James Mangold went the extra mile to create a believable 2029 America by placing subtle cues in the background rather than shoving it in the audience’s face. Things like towering corn-harvesters (corn syrup is more than a silent killer in the future) that are completely autonomous, self-driving semi truck trailers and a Ford F-150 Raptor being sold for a mere $9,000 in a used car lot present a look forward that feels eerily real. The futuristic vibe plays off of the incredible scenery that’s on display in Logan, a benefit that clearly comes from Mangold’s Western roots. The scenes close to the border look and feel like a Max Max movie (or some of My Chemical Romance’s later music videos from their Danger Days albums), and the wide shots of the crew driving through the country are absolutely breathtaking.

The place where the “R” rating really comes in handy the most is thankfully in the fight scenes. There’s a ton of blood and gore in Logan, and while some of the more heated fights still keep a semi-wide angle when he’s sliding people’s heads vertically into thirds, one scene set in the middle of one of Charles Xavier’s time-stopping seizures feels like it’s specifically designed to show you what his claws really do to someone’s face up close. There’s also a few great shots of other mutants using their powers and if you thought they were brutal in the other X-Men films, these scenes only show us how much mutantkind has been holding back on us regular people.

The X-Men cinematic universe’s newest character, Laura is incredible in her role as the current Wolverine – X-23. She barely speaks more than a few sentences in the entire film, which is a nice nod to how Wolverine was originally portrayed 17 years ago in X-Men before he started to open up a bit more after finding a family. Even though she’s about a quarter of the size of Wolverine, she’s just as vicious. She’s also been “enhanced” with adamentium and it gives her a little more weight to anchor herself with in during fights. Her more needle-like claws are also made for speed and precision and it shows in her fighting choreography.

Charles Xavier was an awesome surprise as one of the film’s best characters. Patrick Stewart’s interpretation of the character has always been cool and mysterious like a Marvel universe Dumbledore, but he’s allowed to let loose and have fun in his crotchety old man persona. He’s clearly devastated at the present state of mutantkind, and he’s also extremely hard on Logan for being what he was made to be rather than what he wants to be. They go back and forth throughout the entire film, and Xavier is the perfect anchor to give Logan some much needed humanity. I also really liked Caliban. He’s played by Stephen Merchant this time around over X-Men: Apocalypse‘s Tómas Lemarquis, and it’s a welcome change. He’s downright creepy and the makeup work done to bring the character to life is raw and disgusting in the best way.

The underlying plot of X-Men has always been giving people who find themselves alone in the world a family of their own, and Logan never forgets that. Even at the absolute darkest moment of James Howlett and Charles Xavier’s lives they still have each other, and when Laura joins them she’s the bloody glue that holds them all together. When things get bleak, they stand up for each other and even if they don’t necessarily like each other at any given moment, they all love each other. I also adored that old “X-Men” comics show up in Logan. It’s awesome that in this universe people looked up to Wolverine and the X-Men just like they do in real life, even if “Only about 25 percent of it happened. And not like that.”

The biggest thing bothering me about Logan is that it doesn’t take place that long after X-Men: Days of Future Past presented a positive future for mutants, but it’s alarmingly bleak. This normally wouldn’t bother me, but having it set so close to a mainline X-Men movie means that FOX has the ability to pull a “separate timeline” excuse and retcon Wolverine’s trilogy altogether. Additionally, some of the plot points that you’re supposed to pick up on rely entirely on the audience to recognize a location in the United Staes by its geography and by the time the dialog makes it clear where the characters are, it sort of throws you for a loop. It’s nothing major, but anyone unfamiliar with the general geography of the US might find themselves a little confused.

Finally, one department that could have used a little more R&D is the villains. Richard E. Grant’s Dr. Zander Rice is an infuriating scientist who tells the Transigen employees taking care of Laura to treat her as a product rather than a human being. He’s setup to be a great bad guy but at the end of the day he only gets about ten seconds to reveal his plot because it doesn’t deviate too far from what we’ve already seen – the manipulation and ultimate demise of mutantkind. Boyd Holbrook’s portrayal of Donald Pierce is thankfully more grounded as he leads a team of mercenaries called Reavers to hunt down Laura. Holbrook carries the character well, and his costume is perfectly badass. He also suffers from a lack of screen time to provide his motive though. Basically, they get the job done but they don’t do anything to raise the bar of villainy.

Logan finds the perfect mix of action, drama, comedy and even horror. It never drags from start to finish, and after the credits rolled I wished so badly I could sit back down and watch it again. Marvel proved with its own movies that its characters belong grounded in reality, and while I don’t think that’s necessarily true for ALL of the X-Men, Wolverine is clearly one of those characters. Logan is a movie that would never get made under the Disney banner, and it makes an incredible case for giving violent characters like Logan and Deadpool a bigger budget in addition to an “R” rating. It’s a bummer that it took us this long to get the Wolverine movie we always wanted, but I don’t think anything that’s come before could top or even match Logan – even with a hard “R” rating. I’m not happy that this is Hugh Jackman’s last film in Wolverine’s shoes, but he sees the character out in a perfect manner.

Logan is the best super hero movie I’ve ever seen.