2000 / 104 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

From the very first scene of “X-Men”, we know that we will not be seeing your average, comic book movie. It starts in a concentration camp and ends with a kickass battle atop the torch of the Statue of Liberty. How many movies can you say that about?

“X-Men” is a film that involves cool special effects, neat explosions, great action sequences and a subtle comment on everything from McCarthyism to Nazism to the witch hunt for homosexuals. It has a lot more on its mind that your average summer action movie. Here is a comic book film that actually respects your intelligence and plays to it rather than trying to delude it with loud things and pretty images the way some do.

“X-Men” is the story of a group of individuals who seem to be the next step in human evolution: people with psychic powers, extra long tongues, metal skeletons, and even blue skin and scales. The general public (and one worried senator in particular) think that all these mutants constitute a threat to human existence.

Thanks to Magneto (Ian McKellan), a former Concentration Camp survivor, they might be right. Magneto is worried that the human will try to exterminate his kind so he wants to turn the world’s major leaders into mutants. That way they will see what it is like and, hopefully, be more sympathetic to the mutants’ cause.

Unfortunately, this operation has the side effect of killing whatever human it is tried on.

But the good mutants (led by the effective Patrick Stewart) are determined to stop these rebels at any cost. They recruit two other mutants to get this job done: Wolverine (played by newcomer Hugh Jackman, the guy who might be stealing a few jobs from Russell Crowe soon) and Rogue. Wolverine has a metal skeleton, a tremendous healing ability, and metal claws. He is also a loner, an outcast, without a place in the world and very angry about his situation in life. He is also reluctant to join Professor X’s band, even though he would like a few moments alone with the lovely Jean Grey (the ever-boinkable Famke Janssen). Rogue is also an outcast. A sad, lonely and lost teenage girl with the power to kill or at least do great bodily harm to anyone she touches. The first boy she kissed was in a coma for three months. Anna Paguin, winner of an Oscar for “The Piano”, does a remarkably assured job here.

All the actors do great jobs in fact. The characters are the best part of X-Men. This is the first movie I can recall that actually gets inside the mind of a superhero and lets us see all the emotional baggage that a superpower might bring. But it does not for a minute sacrifice its fluid pace or its cool action for the development of its characters. Nor does it sacrifice its characters at the expense of its action either. Either way, it works. Even the villains have a strong motivation, and they work well. You get a genuine sense of a threat from them.

The movie also has many little touches that add to the pleasure of the viewing experience. For example, look closely during a scene in which the senator emerges onto a beach and you will see Stan Lee (creator of the X-Men himself) standing next to a hot dog stand.

The special effects are well done, the cinematography is often quite beautiful (Bryan Singer shows a flair for that here as well as in “The Usual Suspects”) and the characters draw you in at once. This is, thus far, the best live action movie of the summer, and one of the few truly great movies of the year.

For a good time, you can’t do much better. It isn’t quite “The Matrix” or “Batman”, but it’s an enormous step up from “Batman Forever”.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2000 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.