X-Men

X-MEN
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
RELEASED 18 August 2000
X-Men is the first intelligent blockbuster of the modern genre which actually focuses more on characterisation than action set-pieces. Sure, the action and special effects look cool but what places X-Men in a league of it’s own is the acting and the script. These are real people with real problems, best exemplified by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a man with no past and no direction in life, and Rogue (Anna Paquin), a teenager unable to do all the things, such as kiss boys, that normal teenagers do because when she touchs another person’s skin she takes their life-force (or powers in the case of mutants) and they invariably end up in a coma. The emotional turmoil these two actors bring to their roles is unseen in modern blockbusters. At the head of the two warring teams of mutants are Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen), their RSC stage backgrounds bringing an awesome gravitas to proceedings. But it is the fantastic script which leads to so many memorable scenes and one-liners. Wolverine regularly sends up the whole super-hero idiom, bad-guy Magneto is not portrayed as evil, just mis-guided, and there’s even a love-triangle of sorts between the good guys. Possibly the best thing about X-Men is that when it’s all over, things feel like they’re just beginning. You want more. How many summer films achieve that?
FOUR OUT OF FIVE