Running time: 111 minutes
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry, Brian Cox, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Famke Janssen, Alan Cumming, Anna Paquin
Rating 8 out of 10
As trailers go, X-Men made quite an impression. The original, which director Bryan Singer refers to as "almost like a preview for X-Men 2", took $300 million and injected new life into the superhero genre. The upside of its unexpected success was that it made a follow up a forgone conclusion (Singer stresses "X-Men 2 is not a sequel"). The flipside was that it raised expectations to an almost impossible level. Though X-Men 2 doesn't quite achieve the impossible, it comes pretty close. Singer has rounded up all the usual mutant suspects from the first movie while adding a few new ones to keep things fresh. In the intervening three years Rogue (Anna Paquin) has grown up, Storm (Halle Berry) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) have had makeovers and the X-Jet has had an upgrade. The most significant change is the addition of a new enemy, which comes in the formidable form of William Stryker (Brian Cox) and his more alluring sidekick/back kick/front kick martial artist Yuriko Oyama, known more menacingly as Deathstrike (Kelly Hu).
The action begins with another new face: a blue one, with yellow eyes and pointy ears belonging to Nightcrawler, aka Kurt Wagner (Alan Cumming). Wagner's prehensile tail is more convincing than Cumming's cod German accent, which lends the hoofed teleporting mutant an element of campness. When he breaks into the White House and threatens the President, it is Stryker who is brought in to deal with the mutant problem.
One story line that was touched upon in the original, but is developed more fully here, is Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) search for his past which haunts him in flashbacks and takes on a fresh clarity when he encounters Stryker and his base underneath a dam at Alkali Lake. The bunker proves a poignant setting for the film's finale and the site for Wolverine's showdown with Deathstrike whose powers are not only equal to his, but provide further proof of his origins.
Having spent the first film feeling their way, in X-Men 2, everyone from the director to the terrific cast, to the production team convey a greater confidence and, with more time and money to play with, the results are a slicker, more sophisticated film. In addition Singer has succeeded in his desire to make it "edgier, darker, funnier and more romantic." The only things it lacks in comparison with its predecessor are the element of surprise and an unanswered question at the end. Which poses the question: will there be an 'X-Men 3'? Let's hope so.
