Not flawless, but pretty damn close...A wonderfully refreshing comic book movie which resets the bar

Rating: 10/10 (5 June 2011)

There's so much i can go into but i'll keep it concise.
Story/Script - absolute stroke of genius setting this tale to the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis and civil rights movement. Intertwining the mutant tales with real history really upped the stakes. This is also perhaps the first film where there was little character development for most of the x-men and yet I still rooted for them because as character actors they were so grounded in reality (powers aside) and convincing. Havok, darwin, angel, banshee, mystique (particularly her) all fulfilled their character roles flawlessly but I would've liked to see more explanations for the characters pain (particularly havok). It gets a 10 from me regardless because it wasn't a deal breaker. Azazel and riptide definitely deserved more dialogue and exposition although what they lacked in that they more than made up for in their actions, some of the most bad ass action sequences involved them.
Performances - By far the highlight were James mccavoy and Michael fassbender (professor X and magneto respectively). Magneto brought much gravitas and angst to his role while professor x was instantly likable the minute he was on screen. Jennifer Lawrence gave the best female performance as mystique. Rose Byrne fell just shy of the mark, although he performance was consistent throughout. The biggest surprise and dark horse of this film however was definitely Kevin bacon, who played the smooth, suave but maniacal Sebastian shaw (leader of the hellfire club). He was almost a cookie cutter bond villain but it's all in the performance. Setting it to the backdrop of a potential third world war gave his plan more real world connotations and it was quite scary how close to real world 'new world order' conspiracies it mirrored.
There are subtle real world conspiracy mirrors in this film that the average person wouldn't pick up on IE) Jews having been persecuted becoming no better than the Nazi with superiority complexes much like zionists in israel and the u.s today...
Direction - the direction was flawless, director Matthew Vaughn is the master of juggling an ensemble cast and pacing (when you also consider he only had 9 months to shoot this film). Cinematogrpahy was off the chain and one particular sequence involving Azazel was by far the most impressive cinematic action sequence i've ever seen in a pg-13 film (and it was brutal to boot) Very little I can fault this movie on, I thoroughly enjoyed it, it had everything I could've wanted out of a comic book movie. Small niggle was 'beast' and his prosthetics which would make his eye looked crossed, it was a slight annoyance but in context it wasn't a 'deal breaker' either. It just reminded me I was watching a comic book movie again... :)