Despite its shortcomings, X-Men makes for reasonably interesting viewing with spits and spots of various character plus story elements combining in an obtuse fashion.

Rating: 6/10 (21 July 2010)

Structurally, X-Men is all over the shop. Its building, brooding hour and a half of character and conflict is stretched out to an awkward length during which things unfold, but sporadically before having everything land at an overall 'base' in which a finale of good vs. evil can predictably play out. But the getting there is enjoyable enough, if a little scattered and episodic; the fun the film has with its lead refraining from taking either side, even though there are those in one camp so desperately wanting him to join them, keeps the film from descending too quickly into that aforementioned battle. Small, relatively inconclusive sub-plots bulk up the runtime and make us feel more gets done that perhaps does; the sense of the franchise being set up is certainly prominent in this first edition in flirtations and meek romance between characters; rivalries between others as well as an entire back-story shared between the two most powerful characters in the whole film is only hinted at, but not fully explored. Regardless, from its muddy and grotty opening during which an individual who's rendered an outcast by a superior force suffers at the hands of human beings, right the way up to its climatic fight on Liberty Island during which a similarly desired extermination of a 'race' must play out; the 2000 film X-Men, an adaptation of a comic book series of the same title, works.
We begin with, mercifully, one of the film's very few expositional moments during which an American senator explains to a crowded room just what the mutants are and what threat they may or may not pose, the the view being to take away their right to hide as mutants and make themselves known. We're in, and, like everyone in that room, informed on what everyone is and the general proceedings. Later on, we get a sense of how important this issue is to everyone when the item is placed relatively high up on the United Nations' mandate at their annual meetings. The film provides us with a lead in the form of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, a mutant with the power of invulnerability of which many will rightly point out there is usually little to no peril when revolving a text around an indestructible lead, although he does come with a sort of secondary 'power' in the form of indestructible metallic blades which shoot out of his knuckles when provoked.
Wolverine come across like Clint Eastwood came across as Blondie; complete with gruff voice and nary a cigar too far away so as to easily light up and chomp down on a fresh one now and again, in the process struggling to find much compassion and rarely ever being anything but cynical of what or who might be around him. His introduction, after the brief political speech, sees him forebodingly dominate his human counterparts in the outback of Canadian snowy nowhere as he persists in winning tavern-set cage wrestling matches. In providing us with Wolverine as a lead, we are spared having the film revolve around someone ready to accept his role as a mutant and thus are granted the chance to observe an arc dedicated to coming to terms with one's identity on top of future ideas linked to where one comes from.
The leader of a large proportion of mutants is a certain professor named Charles Xavier (Stewart), whom has set up a base disguised as a school for the gifted in order to bring in young mutants so they may learn more about their powers and how to control them. Under his tenure, Cyclops (Marsden); Storm (Berry) and a certain Jean Grey (Janssen) have prevailed; the mutants on this side of the ideological fence retaining generally 'normal', human-like features in their basic appearance and that each of them are either very handsome or rather attractive in general, as they, complete with Xavier, inhabit this rather beautiful, isolated locale of an academy. On the other side, Ian McKellen's Magneto inhabits a very dark, dingy base of operations with his office taking on a very ugly, metallic, cubist form while his minions are these abnormal creatures whom carry disfigured, scarred bodies in the likes of hulking Sabretooth (Mane); an ugly, blue lizard-type shape shifting creature named Mystique (Romijn) and the, well, toad-like mutant named Toad (Park). Despite being a victim of a proposed purification himself as a young boy at the Nazi death camps, it is Magneto's goal to himself purify human beings as mutants so a more "developed" species can take over, before we supposedly wipe them out; a kind of rooted hatred of humanity after what happened all those decades ago. It's an interesting move from director Singer to ask us to root against this character, given what we saw him suffer through at the beginning.
The fitting element to the conclusion, during which a U.N. meeting is taking place in New York City and Magneto wants to 'mutantanise' the members, is that the final fight unfolds on The Statue of Liberty; itself a piece of iconography symbolising liberation; freedom and freedom of choice – the key thing being that Magneto is out to sabotage these things in reaction to the popular pass that mutants must surrender their own freedom of choice to remain in the dark. We only need to be told once where the fight is unfolding, and a number of exterior shots during this climax only serve to emphasise the point. At its worst, X-Men is the equivalent of watching a series of slightly interesting battles between expensive action figures giving a makeover by way of a computer, as numerous dead-end sub plots worm their way to nowhere; but these complaints minor and rarely happen. At its best, it's an interesting and genuinely fun romp about, at the most, three conflicting ideologies during which oneupmanship is the rollicking order of the day.