Best of the franchise to date, and best of any superhero movies.

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2006)

This was the one, that made me wait for X3 like something I never waited before. X3 proved to be a disappointment, but this was excellent. Marvellous.
The overall "feel" of the film is just great. It's a little dark, dark enough to exploit the drama, leaving room for lighter moments instead of going on full depression mode. Everything has its place and I really felt we weren't being force-fed anything. The balance was just right and the pacing was spot on.
The plot, the locations, the characters, the action - couldn't have asked for more. Emotional too, very emotional. At the end I think I cried a bit like a little mindless fanboy.
The characters are really alive in this one. We get a lot of really cool scenes from Wolverine, Magneto, Xavier, Lady "not really deathstrike" Deathstrike, Mystique, Pyro and Nightcrawler. The Phoenix storyline was set up well - even if X3 eventually did what it did. Some characters, even few of my favorites, didn't get much screen time, but even the short scenes they had were handled with care.
Singer is one hell of a guy creating suspense and developing characters especially when he's working on an X-men movie. Yes, I liked "Usual suspects" and even "Valkyrie", but you got to admit that superhero movies are very challenging to make in a lot of different ways. And while I don't consider him as an action director, the action scenes have that much more of an impact when we really care about what's happening.
Acting is mostly top-notch. From the new cast members Brian Cox especially stood out and continued the tradition of (mostly) excellent casting in X-men movies.
The first film was also good and I liked it, but this one was just pure greatness. To this day, X2 remains as the best superhero movie I have ever seen. I can not find such flaws or shortcomings from it that I can find from other superhero movies. And yes, I have seen The Dark Knight, First Class and The Avengers.
I'm not going to say it's a perfect movie, but as an X-men movie it comes very, very close. Considering it was made 10 years ago and still holds up today...definitely an achievement. I can only hope that upcoming "Days of Future Past" comes even close to this. If that happens, I'll be more than happy.
(If it didn't translate well - yes, I like X-men a lot. If you, the reader, aren't so much into these films, take a couple points off my review. Still, I'd recommend this movie to just about anyone who's even a little bit interested in this kind of fantasy)