Puts the series back where it should be

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2011)

After a disappointing Wolverine (2009) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), director Matt Vaughan and some outstanding lead actors put the X-Men film series back on track in this film. It opens fittingly with a young Erik/Magneto, being dragged away from his parents in the same concentration camp as X-Men (1999).
We then begin watching the rise of two contrasting figures: Erik (Eric Fassbender), and Charles Xavier (James McAvoy). It is primarily because of these two that the movie succeeds. Fassbender plays a cold, vengeful Magneto with enough sympathy that we might believe he's a good guy, while McAvoy shows Xavier as brilliant and young: smart enough to negotiate with CIA, but cocky enough to have silly pick-up lines for co-eds at a university. Their developing ideologies are constantly butting heads, but since this a prequel, we see their efforts to band together come to fruition before the story pulls them apart.
The Cold War is played up to great effect, and the film sometimes seems like an early entry in the James Bond series - generals stare at giant maps of the world, have meetings in casinos and the characters rendezvous with the CIA. The downside of all the detail is that the movie literally races along, especially in the first hour, and sacrifices supporting character development.
The rest of the characters are one-dimensional in nature or simply guided along their paths as required by original trilogy. Mystique is essentially the same character as ever, as are Beast, Moira MacTaggert, and a few other supporting figures. The story sometimes feels like a giant set-up for the trilogy, with plot points existing simply to keep continuity.
The usual metaphors remain - analogies of discrimination, racial profiling, the difficulties of "coming out," and the subtle references with Xavier as Martin Luther King and Magneto as Malcolm X. And in the end, everyone ends up where they should be. And there's a great cameo.
7/10