X-MEN
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An entertaining adaptation of the classic comic book, boasting excellent special effects and sets. Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romjin-Stamos and Halle Berry.
Running time: 97 minutes. Rated: PG-13. At the Empire, the Village East, the Bay Plaza (The Bronx), others.
‘X-MEN” gets off to a terrific start. For the first 20 minutes, it promises to be one of the best-ever movie adaptations of a comic book.
But something happens as the story opens out to include a large ensemble cast of superheroes: The pace slows, and you’re asked to focus on characters so thinly sketched that it’s hard to really care what happens to them.
For the legions of fans of the original comic book series, all of whom are familiar with the life stories of the various X-men, this skimpy characterization presumably won’t be a problem. For such fans, Bryan Singer’s adaptation may well be an ecstatic experience.
For everyone else, what “X-men” has going for it are spectacular special effects and sets, enjoyable turns by old reliables Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, the vision of Rebecca Romjin-Stamos in what looks like a painted-on body suit and the debut of yet another young Australian star, Hugh Jackman.
For those unfamiliar with the X-men universe, the story goes something like this: In the near future, there will be mutants among us, people with special powers that manifest themselves at puberty. There will also be prejudice against these mutants, much of it whipped up by rabble-rousers like Sen. Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison).
To the extent that the mutants have found each other and organized, they are members of two warring groups. One is led by Professor Francis Xavier, known as Professor X (Patrick Stewart). He is an immensely powerful telepath convinced that eventually humans will understand and tolerate their mutant brothers and sisters.
Xavier’s former friend, Erik Lehnsherr, a Nazi death-camp survivor known as Magneto, has the power to move metal with his mind. Unlike Xavier, Magneto has come to the conclusion that humanity is the enemy and must be conquered. He competes with Professor X to recruit young mutants for his own evil Brotherhood.
Two such youngsters are Rogue (Anna Paquin), a teenage girl with the unfortunate gift of helplessly sucking the life force out of anyone she touches, and Wolverine (Jackman), a young man with great strength and astonishing recuperative powers, who has been implanted with retractable steel claws as part of some kind of military experiment.
Rogue has run away from her Mississippi home and hitchhiked to Alaska, where she meets Wolverine. They are on the road together when Magneto’s henchmen try to kidnap them. Magneto plans to use their powers in an attack on the world’s leaders, who are attending a U.N. meeting on Ellis Island.
The bad-guy team includes Toad (Ray Park), who has a 15-foot, whip-like tongue and can jump huge distances; the gigantic Sabretooth (Tyler Mane); and the shape-shifting Mystique (Rebecca Romjin-Stamos).
The good guys include Storm, (Halle Berry), a white-haired African woman who can control the weather; Cyclops (James Marsden), whose eyes have tremendous destructive power; and Miss Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who has both telekinetic and telepathic abilities.
Jackman looks oddly like – and even manages to sound like – Clint Eastwood during his sideburn years. Romjin-Stamos doesn’t say much, but looks terrific. It’s more of a shame that that fine actress Halle Berry gets little to do except get beaten up by the bad guys.
Not surprisingly for a comic series created in 1963, the story is filled with allegorical echoes of the civil rights movement. (Professor X is a Martin Luther King figure; Magneto is more of an embittered Malcolm X – he even uses the phrase “by any means necessary”).
But director Bryan Singer (“The Usual Suspects”) never lets the well-meaning messages about prejudice, etc., distract from the classic popcorn action or the good-looking cast.
He’s also careful not to allow a few post-modern jokes at the genre’s own expense to undermine the drama and turn X-men into a spoof.