X-MEN has brains, but it is terribly RUSHED...

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2002)

Here we are... 1 year before the franchise, waiting to see the un-answered questions, the plot gaps and the under-developed characters to be fulfilled. Well... you see X-MEN's BASIC problem is that it so keen on to be a franchise, that forgets to be a decent, fulfilling and self-contained 100mins feature film! But let's take things from the begging...
Firstly Brian Singer isn't Joel Schumacher(THANK GOD!) and so X-Men isn't a garish, nightmarish BATMAN & ROBIN s***e. But it is not a slick and stylish Batman either, it has a magic but it has flaws that after a certain point(e.g. thinking about the movie!) became really obvious. So what is it? Singer said this ain't gonna be a brain-less action-packed superheroes in tights et la, he proves it when we actually see the opening Auschwitz sequence, with the very emotionally powerfull scene of the young Magneto. The message is obvious Mutants are like the Jews, chased and hated by normal people. They live in prejudice and in Terror, a Terror which is leading the humans against the mutants. In a nutshell: They are hated by the people they are trying to save and who themselves must deal with their own fears and emotions!
A very powerfull story-line(for whom director B. Singer receives a credit), a set of very strong characters(Rogue,a very good Anna Paquin, a teen misfit who is doomed to a life where skin touch must be avoided-a character that best embodies the sense of the mutant dislocation-/ Magneto, kick-ass Ian McKellen who does GREAT, although he is notoriously atracted by Brian Singer's direction!/ and WOLVERINE-with the almost famous(now) Hugh Jackman. He kinda pretty and TOO TALL for Wolvie but he kicks some serious but there!) and some subplots(the romance between Wolverine and Jean Gray, the mystery behind the "mask" of Wolverine et la) who are never really answered and are left hanging there like a "poop on a stick"! And what about the UNDER-DEVELOPED Cyclops(a cold-ass Madsen!), Storm(a coooooool Halle-white haired- Berry!) and the evil GUYS characters who are like something more of cameos and bit less than bit-parts and forgetting that the ALTHOUGH EXCELLENT Patrick Stewart is serving the duties of an on-screen narrator!
Except all these we also get the feeling that we are missing something, maybe some set-pieces or something like that! We got some very good inside jokes-Don't you people just DIE!- or "Would you prefer tights and yellow suits?" hillarius but the shows is not good. We have great fight sequences(the big-tongue/the claws/the thunders/the touch-my-head-bullet etc) but the climactic sequences is disappointing to say the least because instead of a jaw-dropping moments we get rutine stuff, lacking of nerve and no feeling of impact!
At the end, what we see is a VERY GOOD 35 say 40 mins of a different BLOCKBUSTER but the rest is low-life action and plot gaps, under-developed characters, a feeling of rush and less excitment than expected... we get nearly nothing new! But it is very entairtaining... and i can't wait to see the sequel(although i now, know what to expect!)....
I gave it a 6/10