The film has a mature confidence rarely seen in comic book fare, and director-cowriter Matthew Vaughn introduces his parallel protagonists with swift, sure strokes. In a World War II prologue, young Erik Lehnsherr, who will become Magneto, discovers his telekinetic powers at the hands of a sadistic Nazi scientist. Half a world away, Charles Xavier, the future Professor X, is raised amid wealth and comfort.
The seeds of the characters planted, the tale skips ahead two decades to the early 1960s. Erik uses his powers to hunt down the Nazis who killed his parents. Charles, a young college lecturer, turns his empathic skills to advantage in his extracurricular womanizing. Neither is a clear-cut villain or hero, and when they meet, their differences are simply philosophical.
The two are recruited by the CIA to locate others of their kind who can help combat Soviet aggression. As they gradually encounter younger peers, Charles envisions a world where mutants and humans peacefully coexist. Erik sees humans as persecutors and mutants as the next step in evolutionary progress. Their true natures are tested by a power-mad mutant who is bent on inflaming U.S.-Russian tensions into a nuclear holocaust.
The tale is served well by its '60s setting. The film's production design has a sleek retro allure. The look of the U.S. war room is a direct nod to "Dr. Strangelove," and the costumes are slim-cut, hip and sexy, if slightly anachronistic. (Miniskirts and long hair on men were still years away.)
A film so dependent on character dynamics needs fine actors in its top roles. James McAvoy is superb as Charles, playing the patient, good-humored idealist with delicacy. Michael Fassbender is coolly charismatic, rueful and lethal as Erik.
The biggest problem is the movie's nemesis. Kevin Bacon plays Dr. Schmidt, the concentration camp physician who unlocks Erik's rage and thus his magnetic abilities. From the moment he appears on the screen, Bacon strikes a false note. He's equally unconvincing in the 1960s chapter of the film, where he's reincarnated as a Bond-like baddie named Sebastian Shaw. Bacon's character is also saddled with an illogical and unexplained transformation. Somehow he has acquired mutant powers of his own, which punctures crucial plot point that humans and mutants are on separate evolutionary tracks.
Still, the faceoff between heroic and evil mutants and the Americans and Soviets during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis is as taut and thrilling a showdown as we've seen in months. In almost every important regard, the new "X-Men" is first class indeed.
Post a Comment