director
Bryan Singer
screenwriters
Michael
Dougherty
Daniel P. Harris
Bryan Singer
story by
David Hayter
Zak Penn
based on
characters created by
Stan Lee
Jack Kirby
Len Wein
Chris Claremont
Dave Cockrum
John Byrne
producers
Lauren Shuler Donner
Ralph Winter
cinematographer
Newton Thomas Sigel
music
John Ottman
editor
Elliot Graham
cast
Patrick Stewart (Professor Xavier)
Hugh Jackman (Wolverine)
Ian McKellen (Magneto)
Halle Berry (Storm)
Famke Janssen (Jean Grey)
James Marsden (Cyclops)
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (Mystique)
Brian Cox (Gen. William Stryker)
Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler)
Bruce Davison (Senator Robert Kelly)
Anna Paquin (Rogue)
Kelly Hu (Lady Deathstrike)
Aaron Stanford (Pyro)
Shawn Ashmore (Iceman)
Daniel Cudmore (Colossus)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 133m
u.s.
release: May 2, 2003
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other bryan
singer movies
reviewed on this website:
- apt
pupil
- the
usual suspects
- x-men
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The conflict gets rather brutal
and bloody (well, PG-13 bloody) in X2, the first racehorse
out of the summer-movie box. As before (in 2000's X-Men),
mutants are pitted against their genetically inferior human counterparts
and against each other; the stakes couldn't be higher, on the
screen and behind the camera. But director Bryan Singer,
whose first X-Men was a sly and modestly scaled piece
of work, makes sure the animating theme of this series -- the
freedom to be different in the face of intolerant authority --
doesn't get lost in the din of battle. It is possibly not a message
that our government wants millions of American moviegoers to
hear just now, but hear it they will.
The mustache-twirler in this
piece is not Magneto (Ian McKellen), who spends half the movie
in a plastic cell and the other half in grudging, necessary collaboration
with the heroes who put him there. No, this time it's General
William Stryker (Brian Cox, doing his specialty of self-amused
malevolence), who has the ear of the President and wants to see
all mutants eliminated. Unlike the first film's human bigot Senator
Kelly, who could only whine from the senate floor to get his
Mutant Registration Act pushed through, Stryker wields shadowy
commandos who barge into the mutant-training school of the noble
Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart).
X2 punches up the action. The claw-fisted Wolverine
(Hugh Jackman) gets his blades dirty more than once, most notably
with one of Stryker's pet mutants, Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu),
who has similar appendages and quick-healing abilities. A new
character, the loose cannon Pyro (Aaron Stanford), makes short
and fiery work of some misguided police. The major addition to
Xavier's flock is Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), who can teleport
himself anywhere and, for reasons we eventually discover, stages
a sneak attack on the White House. It's as if violent bigotry
brought out concussive retaliatory rage in the oppressed; Singer,
an openly gay director, has approached the series as empowering
wish-fulfillment, and possibly a pre-emptive strike against the
ignorant (take that, Rick Santorum).
The events -- involving, among
other things, the kidnapping of Xavier, the discovery of potentially
fearsome powers in Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), and a nice coming-out
moment between teen mutant Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and his family
-- rocket along, but Singer knows what to do with convoluted
narrative, as he proved in The
Usual Suspects. The movie feels loaded but not overloaded.
Unavoidably, some characters -- the untouchable Rogue (Anna Paquin),
the weather goddess Storm (Halle Berry) -- take a slight back
seat this time out; some of the nuances, like Magneto's doting
relationship with his blue-skinned changeling Mystique (Rebecca
Romijn-Stamos) or the irony of the devoutly religious Nightcrawler's
looking like a devil, are just sketched in, and the movie teases
us with more oblique references to Wolverine's origins. Like
The
Two Towers, much of X2 seems like a way station
to a third movie.
Still, the typically brain-dead
summer-movie season has at least launched with a deafening example
of craft, pride, and unity. The final image promises redemption
and rejuvenation, and that's a refreshing drink right about now.
Until further notice, the X-Men movies continue to be
the most exciting and relevant mega-franchise since the Alien
series closed its doors. Sometimes it takes fantasy to sneak
in the side door and speak truths about our reality.
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