X-MEN 2

Rating: 5

Alas it is all too true that for the most part when it comes to filmed entertainment, we are forced to choose between spectacle and story. Think, for example, of the gulf between STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES and THE PIANIST. X-MEN 2 presents us with a third option. First-rate and imaginative special effects are paired with a story that raises issues beyond exactly how much of what Rebecca Romijn Stamos is wearing is just blue body paint.
It’s not Shakespeare, but it is well-written with characters that are both conflicted and emotionally complicated played by people who can act. As the best speculative fiction should do, it presents us with a meditation on the human condition, but put in terms far enough removed from reality so that we can ponder them without the unconscious preconceptions and biases that can color the world view of even the best of us. In this case, it’s mutants and their special powers, which the storyline explains as being not so much an aberration, as where evolution is inexorably taking us, the way it’s already taken us from being a blob of protoplasm to what we are today. Whether what we are today is a good thing or not is not the purview of this film, but in the prologue, spoken with appropriate gravitas by Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier, the mutant X-Men’s leader, there is a mention that humans have a hard time sharing the planet with anything. What chance do people have who don’t conform to what being normal is defined as this week. Sound familiar?
Don’t worry if you haven’t seen X-MEN 1. There’s a dollop of exposition to bring you up to speed on what went on before without, and this is refreshing, ruining the first film if you want to go back and see it. Beyond, that is, knowing that Magneto, played again by Ian McKellen in fine melodramatic fettle, won’t be killed off in part one. He’s now paying his debt to society in a plastic prison that prevents him using his amazing magnetic powers. Don’t worry, he won’t stay there long. He’ll escape in a way devised by his minion, the shape-shifting Mystique (Romijn-Stamos), that is completely ingenious. And the best part is that when he does escape, it’s to help the X-MEN, not try to destroy them. You gotta love a twist that keeps the sequel from being a retread. Not that Magneto has gone soft. That would be unpardonable. Rather all the mutants are now fighting against evil government guy Striker (Brian Cox), who has figured a way to steal that nifty gadget that Dr. Xavier invented that lets him keep track of every living thing on the planet and, if necessary, kill them. He’s even figured out a way to trick Dr. Xavier into helping him.
That plays out against a United States that is growing militantly anti-mutant after one tries to kill the President. The toll is heavy for all mutants on every level, including a mutant kid who’s mother chirpily asks him if he’s ever tried >not< being a mutant as a SWAT teams moves in.
All the regulars are back, including Halle Berry as the silver-caped weather mistress, Storm, but it is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine whose subplot fleshes out the rest of the film. He’s still trying to find out where he came from and this installment brings him a little closer. He also has to deal with telepathic and telekinetic Jean Gray’s choosing Cyclops over him. It seems a silly choice, and not just because James Marsden, who plays the sunglasses-wearing Cyclops, seems to have been cast for his jawline, not his talent. He’s the one weak performance in an otherwise perfect ensemble. Besides, Jackman’s Wolverine effortlessly exudes a machismo so primal and so overwhelming that something akin to pheromones jump right off the screen. In addition to animal magnetism, Jackman’s scenes with Famke Janssen as Grey are achingly poignant, which is an accomplishment over and above what it seems when you consider the tufted pompadour and those spikes that shoot from his hands. Teenage romance gets a deft metaphorical treatment with the electric Rogue (Ana Paquin) and Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) whose passion must remain theoretical until they can figure out a way to get physical without literally destroying each other. The new kid on the block is Nightcrawler, a pious German circus refugee played by Alan Cumming with blue, bat-like makeup and a compassionate soul as big as the universe. That he can be a sweet presence while sporting pointed teeth and even pointier tail is a testament to his thespian abilities.
Director Bryan Singer keeps things moving along at a sprightly pace without ever sacrificing the, you’ll pardon the expression, human side of the story. Considering the operatic nature of the art direction and the dazzling nature of the special effects, keeping the focus on the characters where it belongs is a good trick in the same league stylistically as Nightcrawler’s smoky teleportation or the dam bursting sequence that doesn’t look like the same old, same old. X-MEN 2’s best special effect though is being a sequel that is the equal of the original.