Separating homo sapiens from homo superiors

Film review: X2: X-Men United

Bryan Singer’s X2: X-Men United separates the homo sapiens from the homo superiors.

No longer saddled with the necessities of exposition, Singer pulls the audience headlong into an exhilarating opening sequence with an attempt on the American President’s life by a mutant that goes "Bamf!" in the night. Like any good storyteller, the auteur begins the tale with a problem that bodes ill for Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his School for Gifted Youngsters.

While Stewart wheelchairs the fine line between benevolence and being the most powerful mutant on the planet, Alan Cumming’s teleporting Nightcrawler amazes Secret Service agents and audiences alike.

With Machiavellian ease, Col. William Stryker (Brian Cox) secures presidential sanction to assault the mutant haven in Westchester, New York. With the Professor off with Cyclops (James Marsden) to see an old friend in a plastic prison and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) tasked with Storm (Halle Berry) to catch a circus act in an abandoned church, Wolverine is left to welcome the unfortunate gatecrashers. In homage to his iconic fastball special, the wolfish anti-hero finally cuts loose with cathartic ferocity, only to be stumped when Stryker dangles a piece of Wolverine’s past.

While Cox downplays mad-scientist panegyrics in favor of Pax Americana pronouncements, Jackman jacks up the action with a stubbed-toe mindset flayed with cold showers in winter. Unfortunately, while Marsden has significantly more to blast with his ruby-quartz lenses, he has less than his fair share of superheroics and more than his fair share of hissy fits. Similarly, while Berry no longer delivers a dodgy accent and kicks up one hell of a storm, she still fails to display her Oscar-winning talents.

Nevertheless, cinephiles familiar with Singer’s work in The Usual Suspects will be delighted to see the director – ably assisted by editor-composer, John Ottman – back in good form, employing the art of misdirection.

One shape-shifting mutant in particular, Mystique (Rebecca Ramjin-Stamos) plays a plum and pivotal role in the Byzantine plot. While Stryker’s commandos overwhelm the X-Mansion, the babe-in-blue-birthday-suit uncovers a plan to capture Prof. X and use Cerebro, an oversized amplifier for mind hacks, to eradicate mutantkind. So far, so familiar. After all, despots always threaten world peace with weapons of mass murder. The plot twists when, after an escape reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Magneto (Ian McKellen) forges an uneasy alliance with the remaining X-Men and masterminds the infiltration of Stryker’s Alkali Lake base.

No mere mustache-twirling villain, Stryker presents a human face for the enemy within any society – ignorance and intolerance. He offers the final solution to the mutant question. So insidious in Stryker’s subversion that he allows the audience to side with Magneto’s cause on one hand yet elicits crowd sympathy on the other.

Like that rare beast Empire Strikes Back, X2 presents a superior sequel to the excellent X-Men – the film that gave the genre a much-needed adrenaline shot to the heart. To extend the Star Wars analogy, the second act breaks the action into three groups. Cyclops and his mentor, Prof. X, are separated from the main group (ala Luke and Yoda). Wolverine and Jean are left to deal with matters on their own (ala Han and Leia). And, when he tells Pyro (Aaron Stanford), "You are a god among insects, never let anyone else tell you otherwise," Magneto paves the way for the fiery youth to join him. (Go figure.)

While McKellen delivers his dialogue with sly humor, Stanford plumbs a more turbulent downward spiral than Hayden Christiansen’s turn towards the Dark Side long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Like some demented cook layering a cake with all sorts of sweet and sour in the mix, director of photography, Newton Thomas Sigel, punctuates the shadowy imagery with near-subliminal X’s lucked away in the visuals and challenges viewers to find them.

Question: When does X mark the triangle? Answer: When it is worn by Jean Grey, Scott Summers (a.k.a. Cyclops), and some fella with flared hair who answers to the name, Logan (a.k.a. Wolverine). After Jean tells him that she doesn’t want to hurt Scott, Logan shuts her up with a move that could be a contender for the forthcoming MTV Movie Awards category for Best Kiss.

Follow-up question: When do three points not determine a triangle? Answer: When firestarter, Pyro, becomes the third wheel between iceman, Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore), and ice queen, Rogue (Anna Paquin). Yes, even in the near future when government-sponsored genocide threatens to stamp out evolution, rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Are the X-Men getting all soft on X-Fans? Not to worry folks. Wolverine and Co. rack up a body count, and it gets ugly.

In fact, the third act shows the unkindest cut of all. In a showdown that threatens to out - Matrix The Matrix, Logan meets his match. Yuriko Oyama, a woman who, in a parallel universe, was once his fiancée, strikes a deadly pose as Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu). It is primarily for this fight scene that people will plunk down money to see X2 again. And again.

When Hu reveals her claws, Hugh’s reaction is priceless. Another surprise hits when Janssen transfigures a telekinetic whose escalating powers climax to biblical proportions in a scene reminiscent of Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

With its budget ballooning from $75 million to $120 million, "Bigger and better" is X2’s mantra, which shows on its props, sets, and CGI. (Even the new X-Jet looks sleeker than the old SR-71 Blackbird and more like an aerial dragster.) One particularly geek-baiting set piece provides tantalizing x-ray glimpses of Archangel’s wing, Lady Deathstrike’s hands, and Wolverine’s skeleton. Despite the increased funding, the producers did not see fit to include a sequence of the Danger Room, a virtual training facility (which production designer, Guy Hendrix Dyas, actually built) in the final cut. The scene would have shown Wolverine slicing and dicing with uncanny flair.

Oh well, maybe next time, maybe X3.