Started strongly and stays that way

Rating: 6/10 (5 June 2017)

"X2" or "X-Men 2" is an American (mostly) English-language film from 2003, so this one will have its 15th anniversary next year. It is the second film from the long-running X-Men franchise that culminated in "Logan" this year, my favorite film of the year so far still and that one got me curious to check out some of the older films from this series. Watched the very first not too long ago and I liked that one, even if for other reasons compared to this one here. This second film is considerably longer than the first, namely it runs for 2 hours 15 minutes and that's quite a lot. The cast includes many actors that also appeared in the very first and also some from Logan still. But back to "X2": Anna Paquin is back too of course, even if obviously far from being as much in the center as she was in the first film. It's not really possible to identify a single character or actor as lead here. It is basically an ensemble performance and it would be interesting to see who has the most screen time. Jackman perhaps? I am not sure. The script is also an ensemble piece as it includes a massive quantity of five writers with one of them being Bryan Singer who also already directed the first film. Sure 135 minutes is very long, but this amount of writers is perhaps still a bit too much. And there were moments when you could talk about too many cooks spoiling the broth. I would say that this applies mostly to the middle part as these 45 minutes were packed with action, but in terms of storytelling it was a bit of a letdown compared to the first 45 minutes, the best part of the movie. The final 45 minutes are somewhere in-between quality-wise.
Anyway, it takes quite a while to understand who the main antagonist is. Early on, it seems as if it may be the character portrayed by Alan Cummings ("The Good Wife"), but that perception changes drastically when we see the antagonist is oh so human only. But he is still powerful enough to convince even Ian McKellen's evil mastermind character to join forces with the good guys. Politics are a major component in here, not only because the President of the United States appears pretty quickly, but yeah, it is once again about tolerance, acceptance and witch-hunt when it comes to mutants. And in the end, it seems as if there are losses for both sides when one major character loses her life apparently, perhaps also to keep the writers from having to elaborate further on love stories in the X-Men universe and (SPOILER) even if I like Famke Janssen as an actress (sure more than Romijn and Berry), it may have been an okay decision. Then again, I see she is back for future films again, so we will see what explanation they will give us for that. So yeah there are pros and cons for this film. It is obviously not on the same level as "Logan", but it is still a fairly decent achievement overall and a convincing sequel. I just wish they could have kept the effects-packed second third a bit shorter as it really would have helped the film's focus overall. Nonetheless, what happened in here did actually get me curious about the third film from the franchise. I will make sure to check it out at some point in the coming weeks/months. "X2" gets a thumbs-up from me and I recommend checking it out.