X2

When first I saw "X2," aka "X-Men United," aka "Another X-Men: The First One Was Profitable," I didn't want to review it. I was worried that the process of reviewing would ruin the film's pleasure; there wasn't much that was enduring in it, just a prodigiously cool two-hour ride with appropriately steep peaks and brief valleys, and divining the parts of such an experience, I thought, might ruin it in my memory. Nothing special, except that this isn't normally a worry of mine; otherwise, how could I be a movie reviewer?

Now I've seen it twice, and spent much of the second viewing waiting for cool stuff to happen while thinking about matters related to but essentially extraneous to the film, and I'd like to delve into why the pleasures of this film in particular seemed to pass from my memory more quickly than many other films that, on their surface, are just as gloriously stupid.

Some of the problem is inherent in "X2"'s plot, which pretty much ignores humans, except for some token specimens who are demonic or stupid or both, in favor of mutants. And for good reason; after all, several of these mutants kick ass in ways unavailable to mere Homo sapiens. If that wasn't enough, the mutation process apparently greatly enhances the lust-inspiring ability of all its subjects as well. (Seriously, though: Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, and to this they added Kelly Hu, whose attractiveness I rhapsodized about earlier in my "review" of "The Scorpion King"? If this sample is representative...) It's a lot more aesthetic fun, all else being equal, to watch mutants do the stuff they do here than it would be if humans were doing the same thing.

But all else ain't equal. The fact that Charles Xavier, Jean Gray, Storm, Wolverine, Magneto, Mystique, et al. are a breed apart is their action-cinematic blessing and their regular-cinematic curse. Humans are still supposedly distrustful of mutants, but all we see is the burning desire of General William Stryker (Brian Cox) to eliminate the genetic freaks; there's none of the mass popular persecution of the first film, which frankly inspired a lot more thought about our own intolerance. Here the plot plays out like an intramural squad battle, rather than a war as such, because the cast is so limited. It inspires worry that the struggles in subsequent profitable "X-Men" movies are going to become more and more claustrophobically self-referential and hermetically impermeable to the outside world until they're as completely irrelevant as, well, those struggles that are depicted by comic books from all ages of man.

The irrelevance of the struggle wouldn't be a problem—it's not a problem in so many other action movies—if "X2" didn't take itself so damn seriously. Bryan Singer, the director, helped script this thing, and he shows how seriously he's taking these goings-on with his extraordinarily skilled direction; the omnipresent blues and grays and ominous bumps and whines and gracefully introduced shots of pondering mutant faces are given just as much care as the cool-ass fights. But we haven't been told why we should care about the mutants, and we sure can't identify with their struggles unless we are possessed of truly awesome self-delusional power. When Singer isn't showing Wolverine going feral on some soldiers attempting to snatch up the younger mutants or the slow, grand collapse of an entire dam due to explosions on the interior, the movie rattles around aimlessly in the lavish box Singer has contructed.

It would help, of course, if more of the actors were doing a good job. Berry really should not be Storm; she's too small and pretty to command her surroundings, and she can't quite get her readings of her lines right. Janssen is hot but inert, and with so much action around her, her character becomes a huge black hole in the middle of the film. Stewart's getting almost a little too cute and well-scrubbed as an old man, and that dude who plays Cyclops isn't worth the effort it would take to look up his name on IMDb.com.

Only Ian McKellan as Magneto and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine have any fun. McKellan gets to be both snide and successful, and he revels in his amply confirmed superiority. But Jackman especially seems to be attuned to the absurdity of the whole enterprise, and approaches the small strangenesses of mutant life with a deadpan glare that's as intensely playful, in its way, as the searing heat in his eyes when he has to defend Xavier's gifted children against Stryker's special home-invasion forces. He and McKellan put the, well, inhumanness of the other performers in all-too-striking relief, as the remaining characters seem trapped in burning self-pity or heedless passions redolent of adolescence.

So there it is: an extremely fun film that falls down upon even the most cursory analysis. (Mike Castle, a dedicated correspondent of the Spam-O-Matic, has sent me an e-mail in which he points out several logical flaws in the plot, many relating to what I call "super powers creep amnesia," where new mutant abilities are introduced for effect and then not employed in situations where they would be very useful, apparently because the movie would end prematurely if they were used. There's a lot of that here.) There's fine action all the way through here, quite reminiscent of the fine action in the first "X-Men," and I'm certainly not going to go around telling people not to see movies with cool ass-kicking scenes and dramatic problems. But even among films of its kind, "X2"'s mutations don't adapt it well for artistic survival after you leave the theater.

FOR THE RECORD

My mutant power would be to totally be able to kick people's asses. I'm not sure exactly how this would work, but my feet would unerringly find people's asses and kick them (without getting stuck or anything, though if I had a boot I might break it off in there). They'd call me "Proctopod." Also I would be able to play the Biz Markie song "Nobody Beats the Biz" without needing to use an audio system, and everyone would have to fight me to the rhythm of that song, which would make kicking their asses much easier.

A NOTE ON THE CLASSICAL MUSIC USED IN THIS FILM

Someone apparently gave Bryan Singer a "Mozart's Greatest Hits" CD before this movie went into post-production, and he apparently slapped himself upside the forehead at the genius of the music and decided to stick it all over this movie. The Piano sonata no. 15 in C major and the Serenade no. 13, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik," both make appearances in Magneto's cell, presumably to indicate that he is a cultured gentleman with higher tastes than the rest of the characters in this film can command. It instead makes him sound like someone who owns a "Mozart's Greatest Hits" CD. Give the man some freaking Haydn, if you want music that screams "I'm classical music!" without also screaming "I'm one of the four Mozart pieces everyone's heard five million times!"

More interestingly, Nightcrawler's opening instant-action scene is set to the "Dies irae" from Mozart's Requiem, which as a plot device featured so prominently in that historically inaccurate film "Amadeus." The "Dies irae" is almost as athletic and cataclysmic as Verdi's more famous setting of the text, and it makes for a great accompaniment for a cool action sequence. However, Mozart's "Dies irae" is a little under two minutes long, and Nightcrawler kicks ass for a much longer period of time, necessitating some creativity. The result is that the first time I saw this film, I sat through the opening action scene helplessly thinking "Edit...edit...edit..." and not really appreciating the ass-kicking I was being shown. Ah well. The estimable Robert Kahn said it worked well for him, and it worked fine the second time when I knew what was coming.

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