"X-Men" is Extraordinary!

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2011)

"X-Men: First Class" is an first class "X-Men" movie.
"Kiss Ass" director Matthew Vaughn and scenarists Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, and Jane Goldman have done a marvelous job depicting the back story to the first "X-Men" movie. Furthermore, they have done something ingenious by using Cuban Missile Crisis as part of the story. As Sebastian Shaow, Kevin Bacon makes a superb villain who rarely delivers a threat he doesn't carry out. In his first scene with a young Erik, he threatens to shoot Erik's mom at the Nazi concentration camp if Erik doesn't move a coin on his desk. When Erik cannot summon sufficient power to move the coin a millimeter, Sebastian Shaw shoots her stone cold dead without a qualm. Shaw's cold-blooded murder of Erik's mom triggers a rage in him, and he crunches a small metal ringer bell, some filing cabinets, and then the helmets of the two German soldiers holding his mom. Later, when a high American ranking officer threatens to commit suicide and take Shaw with him, Shaw snatches the hand grenade away from Colonel Hendry and pulls the pin. We watch as he absorbs the explosion before Hendry's eyes. Bacon's villainy knows no bounds. Later, James McAvoy appears as Charles Xavier before he receives his title as a university professor, and Michael Fassbender is the adult form of Erik Lensherr. Erik is in hot pursuit of Shaw. He travels to Argentina to track down Shaw, but he finds only two of his associates in a bar. One says he is a pig farmer and the other is a tailor. Erik disposes of both of them in a slick showdown, stabbing the pig farmer in the hand twice. In one terrific scene, when he finds Shaw aboard his yacht, he uses the anchor of Shaw's yacht to destroy the yacht.
The first scene in the Nazi camp bears an amazing resemblance to the scene in director Bryan Singer's original "X-Men." After that creepy scene, director Mathew Vaughn stages the eventful scene in his office with Erik when he guns down his mother. As he leaves Erik alone, he presses the coin into his palm that he had asked Erik to move. Vaughn and his writers show us Charles Xavier at an early age when he encounter Raven for the first time. She is in his kitchen after dark attempting to steal food when he walks in on her with a baseball bat. He exposes her for a fraud because she is masquerading as his late mother. The confrontation concludes with blows as Charles and Raven become life-long friends.
Eventually, the C.I.A. recognizes the presence of mutants when Xavier reads their minds and Raven performs her shape-shifting tricks before their eyes. Meantime, Erik has grown up, and he is searching for Shaw. This time he doesn't have as much luck with his adversaries as he had earlier with a Swiss banker and two Nazis hiding out in Argentina. Shaw and his two mutant friends evict him from their yacht. At the same time, CIA Agent Moria MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) has been on the trail of Shaw. Since she cannot convince her superiors that mutants exist, she invites a recently graduated Xavier to CIA Headquarters with Raven alongside to advise them about the reality of mutants. Naturally, Moria's CIA superiors aren't impressed. Nevertheless, Moria and Charles pursue Shaw.
The showdown during the Cuban Missile Crisis is skillfully orchestrated and watching Magneto levitate a submarine out of the Gulf of Mexico is impressive.
Hugh Jackman's profane cameo as Wolverine makes the movie and seals its continuity with the other "X-Men" epics.