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X-Men: The Last Stand Reviewed by Graham H.
Moes Rating: B- With $120 million taken in by “X-Men: The Last Stand” over the four-day 2006 Memorial Day weekend, it’s safe to say the franchise has mutated into a monster. It’s a watchable film, but the huge take for this and the previous week’s over-hyped box office champ, The Da Vinci Code, really only proves to me how desperate for entertainment we are these days. “X3” is clearly the weakest of the trilogy for those who like their superhero Kapow! with a layer of character depth. The first two films — I’m no aficionado of the comic books, so let’s pretend they don’t exist — introduced us to an intriguing premise: average folks carrying a “mutant gene” suddenly find themselves manifesting super-folk powers that alienate from self and society. I still get chills watching the opening scene in the first film, in which an anguished child torn from his parents at a Nazi death camp unleashes a fury he didn’t know he had on the gates separating them. Too bad there’s nothing so memorable in the mildly grand finale here. The social commentary has taken on the perfunctory academic feel of an after-school special on gay rights or being nice to fat kids. Worse, in the clearest example yet of pluralism being the bane of good filmmaking, the movie seems unwilling to commit on whether or not being gay or fat — or in this case, a mutant — is a good or bad thing.
It all veers close to a multi-car comedy pileup this time too, thanks to yet another airhead performance by Halle Berry (Can Academy Awards be revoked? Please?), and the addition of Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Frasier Crane mutated into a big, blue Wookie now in charge of the Pythonesque-sounding “Department of Mutant Affairs” for the president. Another problem is the failure of the story to coalesce around a core. It’s always been an ensemble story — it’s X-men, plural, after all — but where the first two pictures were carried on the able shoulders of Wolverine and to a lesser degree Rogue, X3 lacks a focal point. It’s a “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead” build to a big-fight finale that, when concluded, leaves us with the unsatisfied feeling things are ended but far from concluded. (Just a hunch, but a government that can’t stop poor Mexicans from infiltrating Arizona with wire cutters probably doesn’t have a real good grip on mutants capable of riding the Golden Gate Bridge like a magic carpet to Alcatraz.) Still, I’m giving it a B-, so it can’t be all bad. I guess there’s still something to be said about the X-factor of visual spectacle and well-executed action. Credit goes to director Brett Ratner, who took over from departing X1 and X2 director/co-writer Bryan Singer. Ratner, best known for the Rush Hour films, was viewed nervously as a replacement by most fans, but he’s acquitted himself well. Script aside, it feels like a seamless transition. Wild fight scenes and killer special effects abound — not the least of which is a nifty flashback moment that marks the first time in movie history two senior-citizen actors have actually appeared the “20 years earlier” they’re supposed to be. (Computer enhancement is now evidently even taking the latex and powder puffs out of the hands of the make-up guys.) In other words, character development is a nonessential bonus for an action film firing on all cylinders. The X-Men franchise has always worked as a throwback to those childhood superhero debates and backyard wars between action figures: Who would win in a toe-to-toe between He-Man and The Hulk? And how might Han Solo and his blaster take down Papa Smurf armed with a G.I. Joe bazooka? X3 has the answers, my friend. Bottom line, that blueberry-hued Fraiser may have you chuckling to see him in a three-piece suit, but hold on to your popcorn when he puts on the biker jacket and rips into a phalanx of villains shooting molten lava from their eyeballs. |
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