A Thoughtful and Interesting Watch

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2006)

What Bryan Singer has done to bring X-Men to the big-screen is both smart and fun to watch. Instead of making X-Men about nothing but big mutant action, he's managed to make a good action movie with a good plot and puts everything in the movie together nicely and with some style in a few areas.
Considering the mutants included in this movie, Singer has done, if I may say so, an excellent job in selecting the actors and actresses for each role. As far as bring their character to life, Jackman does the best job as Logan or Wolverine as he's better called by fans. Paquin does a good job at capturing the confused and seemingly stressed feeling of Rogue. But Patrick Stewart is the smartest choice in particular, even though Jackman does the best at being Wolverine. Not only does Stewart have the perfect look for Professor Xavier, but he also has the right personality and attitude, a kind of know-it-all but helpful and not-so geeky kind of personality makes him one of the more believable characters. Ian McKellen is a great choice for Magneto. Not only is he the smartest choice for Magneto, but McKellen creates a charming and calm kind of feeling towards his character, which even as a baddie he manages to make the audience like him. All the other performers of X-Men do their part to bring their mutant role to life, and they all do it successfully and almost perfectly.
X-Men's plot is actually one of its better elements. Yes, you could go on saying how cool each of the mutants were, how great the special effects are and how cool the vs. battles were, but to talk about this movie and not mention it having a good plot is almost an insult. The thing I like about this movie is that it takes its time to let the audience understand everything that's going on and the movie takes what some might call a risk in not being so involved in the action sequences and using up a majority of the viewing time to let the story of the movie flow and lets the action and performers go and unfold the events that happen throughout the film. But since I don't want to spoil the simple but more than above-average plot for you, I'll keep it on the down-low from now. Just know that if you're looking for a good plot in X-Men you won't be disappointed.
The action in X-Men isn't that much of a focus of the movie as the plot is, but not to worry, the action is more than satisfying and most of the time pretty cool. The special effects in this movie aren't used in a way that it'd make X-Men the king of CGI like King Kong and Titanic are, but they're nothing short of impressive and make the action sequences much more stylish. Most of the action is thrown out near the end and it all leaves a good feeling with the audience to make them feel satisfied and to have gotten a good share of action.
But even with all that I've said in X-Men, it just doesn't seem to rise to that mark to make it an Oscar-worthy film. It's not that the movie lacked anything, not at all, everything in the movie was pieced together right, but it's just one of those movies that doesn't give the viewer that "wow" or "now that's a stunning masterpiece" impression once the movie ends, but instead comes out being a great movie that only lacks the beyond belief factor that the biggest movies deliver. But by no means is X-Men a bad film, there's absolutely nothing that I could say was particularly wrong with the film, it's only when you stack it against the best movies that it comes short, and X-Men almost seems to want to challenge those films in some way.