X2: X-Men United

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

Herald rating: * * *

You could make a case that X2 (pictured) was a geopolitical allegory for our times: the US as global policeman and self-appointed moral authority, the White House using its might to impose its will or beliefs on those who in any way differ from its narrow world view, be they Muslims or mutants. Or you could just say it's another big, dumb movie with great computer-generated effects.

To recap, in the near future children are born with a special X-factor in their genes that gives them special powers and makes them ÒmutantsÓ.

Senator Robert Kelly was harnessing the threat into a new Holocaust. Fellow mutants and former friends Erik Lehnsherr and Professor Charles Xavier tried to stop him by different means.

Xavier wanted to stop the hatred toward mutants peacefully, while Magneto planned to even things out with a machine that would speed up the mutation process in all humans. To stop Magneto, Xavier formed a special group of mutants called X-Men.

As X2 opens Xavier (Patrick Stewart) is still running his school. Cleverly designed to provide expensive sets of dolls and other forms of merchandise, the mutants include Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the knifeman with blades from his knuckles; Storm (Halle Berry), who can control the weather; Dr Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), moves objects with thought-power; Cyclops (James Marsden), eyes shoot laser beams; Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), the shape-shifter; Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), who can cool your cocktail and other things; Pyro (Aaron Stanford), flamethrower; and Rogue (Anna Paquin), who can take on aspects of the personalities around her.

There is a new mutant, Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), a blue-faced, yellow-eyed, pointy-eared, hoofed and tailed teleporter. Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) continues his plot, and there's a new villain, General William Stryker (Brian Cox) who is assigned by the government to deal with the mutant threat and enlists a mutant traitor, Yuriko aka Deathstrike (Kelly Hu).

What's really getting up the mutants' noses is that their right to privacy is being violated with a new Mutant Registration Act. The President is immediately threatened when a mutant attacks the White House, in what might be a terror attack to give mutants a bad name and allow the President to draft more laws undermining their rights.

Using most of the US$300 million that the first flick banked, director Bryan Singer and his crew produce a new story, rather than a sequel, that mostly lives up to his promise to be Òedgier, darker, funnier and more romanticÓ, before Wolverine and Deathstrike meet in the final countdown at Stryker's base under a dam.

DVD features: movie (135min); commentaries with director Bryan Singer and cinematographer Tom Siegel, and with producers Lauren Shuler-Donner, Ralph Winter, writers Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, David Hayter; The History (two features tracing the evolution of the series and characters from Stan Lee's original comic-book creation, 23min); Pre-Production (three features on the work before cameras rolled, 28min); Production (three features on filming stunts, fights and makeup, 90min); Post-Production (music score, webcast 28min); 11 deleted/extended scenes; photo galleries; trailers.