It is bloody, brutal, bruising and the most human superhero film since The Dark Knight in 2008.

Wolverine, aka Logan, has always been blessed with the power of regeneration, but here his body is failing. The adamantium in his bloodstream – the synthesised metal having been added by military scientists to enhance his natural mutant traits – is poisoning him. He is heavily scarred, walks with a limp, and knocks back the booze to dull the pain.

He's finally beginning to look his age, too – though admittedly not the full 137 years (in comic-book lore, Logan was born James Howlett in 1880).

Jackman is only 48, and still in great condition, but he's been thinking about saying goodbye to Wolverine for a while. On a press tour for X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014, he told me it was getting "harder and harder" to prepare for the role. He admitted to being surprised even then at how long he had been playing the character, despite having been contracted for only two movies at the outset and having decided ever since on a film-by-film basis whether to keep going.

"I remember hearing Yul Brynner did 21 years [on stage and screen] as The King in The King and I, and I was, 'How could you do that'?" he said. "And I'm very rapidly approaching it."

Early reviews of Logan, which debuted at the Berlin Film Festival this week, have been strong. Variety called it "a wholehearted drama made with a shot language that looks nearly classical". The Hollywood Reporter judged it "an affectingly stripped-down stand-alone feature … that draws its strength from Hugh Jackman's nuanced turn as a reluctant, all but dissipated hero". Screen Daily was less convinced, though, calling it "a dark, mournful, bloody affair" that "doesn't do enough to enliven the character, the X-Men universe or comic-book films in general".

Having seen it this week, I'm firmly in the pro camp.

Logan is a man tormented not just by a failing physique but also a conflicted conscience. He knows that the thing he does best – killing – is nothing to be proud of. It doesn't even matter if the victims are villains. As he says when someone notes that the corpses littered all about were "bad men", he brushes it aside with a simple "all the same". As in, all the same, it's still their blood on my hands (or retractable claws, to be precise).

Logan is set in a near future – the year is 2029 – in which mutants are virtually extinct. As far as we can tell, only he, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and an albino called Caliban (Stephen Merchant) survive, and even then, barely.

Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier and Hugh Jackman as Logan are the last of a dying breed. Photo: Fox

No new mutants have been born in 20 years, but some have been created. The military-industrial complex has used mutant DNA to create hybrids, with the intention of weaponising them. One of these, a young girl called Laura (Dafne Keen), has been crafted from Logan's genes. She is, effectively, his daughter.

It's a classic curmudgeonly-loner-is-forced-to-look-after-a-kid-and-becomes-more-human-as-a-result tale, paired with elements of the fantastic (superpowers, laboratory-created humanoids). There's even an extended nod to the movie Shane, in which a gunslinger and a young boy form a deep bond. (Incidentally, Shane was itself the model for Shame, the 1988 Australian movie that starred Deborra-Lee Furness – aka Hugh Jackman's wife – in the lead. How's that for a closed loop?)

But it's the backdrop of a very-slightly-futuristic world that simply extrapolates some grim realities of the present one that makes Logan especially compelling.

Farmers forced to "steal" the water that ought to be theirs from giant corporations that have claimed it as their own; deals reneged on by new owners when businesses change hands; scientific development shifted offshore to avoid scrutiny and regulation. This all feels as real as Logan's pain, and as dangerous as his claws.

Has the sun really set on Hugh Jackman as Wolverine? Photo: Supplied

The version of Logan that has been screened to critics doesn't have the usual coda, the post-title sequence that has generally served as a set-up or teaser for the next film in the X-Men franchise or associated spin-offs. That seems fitting for a film that offers an entirely feasible exit route for Logan.

Rumour has it, though, that when the film opens in cinemas next week it will feature such a sequence. That, too, is entirely feasible. The franchise, like Logan himself, has amazing powers of regeneration, shifting time, narrative order and even characterisation in order to revivify.

We probably haven't seen the last of Wolverine. We might not even have seen the last of Jackman as Wolverine. But if it's the mark of a great showman to know when to exit on a high, I'd be betting – and hoping – that we have.

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin