X-Men

Doesn't the tagline "Trust a Few, Fear the Rest" kind of go against the movie's message?

As the release of the X-Men franchise reboot/re-imagining/origin story, X-Men: First Class, rapidly approaches, I thought it would be interesting to re-watch X-Men and see how the ball got rolling.

To understand this movie, you have to accept that there has been a genetic trend in human births over the last sixty or so years that has allowed a tiny minority of people to be born with genetic mutations.  I'm not talking about your normal defects or abnormalities, though.

Ugly is not a super-power.

These mutations give extraordinary powers to otherwise normal people.  The powers range quite a bit, from the ability to control weather or magnetism to fast healing or being irresistible to women.

Hell-lloooo, ladies!

Can you buy into all that?  If not, this movie is going to seem a little silly.  Well, mutants (as the super-powered-by-birth are called) have apparently been trying to live normal lives, safe in their anonymity from the lynchings that can occur when people find something new to hate.  Seeing this as a dangerous status quo, Senator Kelly (Bruce Davidson) proposes legislation that will require all mutants to register themselves and their abilities with the US Government, essentially treating them as weapons.  Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) believes that Senator Kelly is frightened of what he doesn't understand, but that the general public will see the legislation as the bigoted mess it is.  His take on the situation is to protect humanity from angry mutants and things will get better.  Magneto (Ian McKellan), who survived German concentration camps, sees this as another attempt to wipe "his people" off the face of the planet.  Understandably, he decides to take a more offensive approach to this problem.  Both men have followers willing to fight for these two opposing ideologies, but the first steps toward a genetic war come when a runaway teen, Rogue (Anna Paquin), and a metal-boned and -clawed tough guy, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), suddenly pop up on the radars of Xavier and Magneto.

Man, the cast of X-Men is good!  Mostly.  Well, Hugh Jackman is perfect in the lead role as Wolverine, at the very least.  Angry and tough, yet confused and surprisingly caring, Jackman brought the iconic character to life.  Ian McKellan was great as the villainous Magneto, but it wasn't his nastiness that made him so appealing; McKellan succeeded in the always difficult task of making a bad guy sympathetic.  Patrick Stewart was also good as Xavier, and not just because he looks exactly like the comic character.  Stewart's eloquence and British accent helped make the almost saintly nature of Xavier plausible --- if only the screenwriters could have found a way for his character to not get sidelined in the movie, then we could have seen his kindness tested.

The rest of the cast was definitely supporting, when compared to those three.  Anna Paquin was solid as Rogue, and she managed to not be annoying or whiny in a role that could have easily swung that way.  I think James Marsden doesn't get enough credit for his work as Cyclops; yes, playing the uptight guy is pretty easy, but he and Jackman had a lot of chemistry with their verbal barbs.  Famke Janssen was completely acceptable as Jean Grey, even if the love triangle that formed around her was pretty underdeveloped.  Halle Berry, on the other hand, was truly wretched as Storm.  Pick an accent, already, lady!  It doesn't help matters that she delivered the absolute worst line in the whole movie: "Do you know what happens when a toad is struck by lightning?  The same thing that happens to everything else."  That's just terrible.

Two non-masturbation things that make you go blind: bad acting and bangs.

On the other hand, I liked Shawn Ashmore's performance as Iceman, even if it was steeped a little too heavily in teen melodrama.  As for the bad guys, Ray Park was pretty cool as Toad, even if he's just a green-painted stuntman.  I thought Rebecca Romijn looked pretty hot in her ridiculously naked "costume," and the special effects made her character seem awesome.  When you look a little closer, though, you realize that she almost never spoke and most of her "acting" involved her looking sexy.  Well, that's good enough for most people, I guess.

Not the most attractive "O" face, but I'll take it.

I was pretty disappointed in Tyler Mane's Sabretooth, though.  A lack of interesting dialogue, an over-reliance on wires to show off his super-strength and super-jumping (?) abilities, and a generally awful character design combined to make Sabretooth pretty lame.  And that's a shame, since --- in the comics, which are obviously not the movies --- he's basically Wolverine minus the conscience. 

Plucking and threading aren't enough...grab a mower to tame those brows!

Bryan Singer did a great job directing this film, with the exception of letting Halle Berry use a terrible accent (sometimes).  This is a character-driven movie, where these potentially silly and melodramatic mutants are seen as people instead of excuses for special effects.  That is what makes this movie so important.  Keep in mind that the last major super-hero movies before this were the too-violent-for-kids Blade and the awful Batman & Robin; if X-Men didn't deliver to a wide audience, you can be sure that Spider-Man and Batman Begins would not have been made (at least not in this decade).  I appreciated a lot of the choices made by Singer and his production team, too.  The black leather costumes keep the guffaws of implausibility away much longer than comic book costumes would have.  Making Wolverine the main character and leaving a lot of his history unexplained/under-explained gave his character (who is otherwise kind of un-invested in Xavier's team) motivation and a character arc.  The tone of the film is perhaps Singer's greatest legacy on this movie, as well as for all post-2000 comic book movies.  This feels like a science fiction film instead of an adaptation of a childish medium.

Hugh Jackman always has time to entertain with a Tonys-related tale.

The movie is not perfect, though.  Magneto's secret hideout is located in an island prison with no walkways between the cells?  Exactly where would that be?  The pace is a little slow, and nothing truly thrilling ever happens; it does an admirable job of setting up the premise with a fairly interesting story, so the sequel could be awesome.  The special effects are solid, but not spectacular.  What makes this movie seem more impressive is the awful development hell it went through before being made this way.  There were several script rewrites, many directors, and Hugh Jackman was cast as Wolverine after the movie had been filming for three weeks already; the actor originally signed to play the part was the awful Dougray Scott, who backed out to film Mission: Impossible II.  The film also had Joss Whedon do a dialogue-fixing rewrite for one of the older, stupider scripts; his script allegedly only had two lines make the final movie --- Storm's lightning and toads line and the one where Wolverine calls Cyclops a dick, the worst and best (respectively) lines of the movie.  When you think of the other Marvel Comics movies that had been made before this (the Dolph Lungren Punisher and the rubber-eared Captain America) and how easily this film could have been made into something like them, I think X-Men deserves some respect.  And it helps that it's a good movie.

I should also point out that I am a ridiculously big X-Men comics fan (like, 30+ solid years of collecting big), so I know good and bad X-Men stories when I see them.  Writing this review also reminded me of the awesomely cheesy (but still awesome for its time) X-Men cartoon and its cool theme music.  Adapting that theme into a symphonic film score would have made this movie near perfect for my nerdy tastes.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

Why do I do this to myself?  Sure, I have a healthy interest in movies that are so bad they're good (I call them Lefty Gold), but sometimes I knowingly just put my mind in harm's way.  Case in point: Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. I had heard that the movie was supposed to be bad, but when I found out that it had a 0% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I was shocked; even Battlefield Earth earned a 2% "rotten" rating.  Zero percent is virtually unheard of.  Maybe I just had to see it to believe it, or maybe I'm just a sucker for pain, but I chose to dive into B:EvS all by my lonesome.

If you are fortunate enough to have avoided this movie so far, here's the trailer to give you an idea of what I was working with:

This is one of those movies where the less you pay attention to the plot, the faster the nosebleeds will stop.  For reasons that are left unexplained for a while, Sever (Lucy Liu) takes it upon herself to kidnap the son of Robert Gant (Gregg Henry), the director of the DIA (which is apparently a real government agency).  As the son of a prominent military intelligence man, the kid was pretty well-guarded.  Not that it matters to Sever; she just waltzes right in and pulls some some serious Keanu Matrix shit, and suddenly, the guards are all down.  And by "Matrix shit," I mean the sequels.  Basically, she wore sunglasses at night and a long leather (hooded) trench coat while she beat up some guys who treated her like she was the damn bogeyman and not just a moderately athletic actress. 

Because trenches are made for hand-to-hand combat.

To find the boy, the FBI digs into its "super awesome former agents that can easily be talked into rejoining" files and finds Ecks (Antonio Banderas), who is busy drinking, smoking, and growing stubble at a nearby bar.  Two agents try to strong-arm him, he predictably beats their asses despite being theoretically drunk and out of practice, and he agrees to find Sever and the boy.  Why?  Apparently, Ecks' boss (Miguel Sandoval) has information on the death of Ecks' wife --- who might not really be dead!  Gasp!  I hope he's not playing with Ecks' emotions, because I can tell from his three minutes of screen time so far that Ecks is still hurting from her presumably untimely end!  So, Ecks is chasing after Sever with some FBI guys while the DIA team (led by Ray Park, who was totally third-billed in the movie and not wearing extensive makeup for a change) tries to reach her first.

From that synopsis, you might have noticed that the microscopic killer robot isn't as prevalent in the story as it is in the preview.  That's kind of odd, right?  Well, that's because it appears in the scene shown in the trailer and then again at the end.  And no, the robot thing is not called "Ballistic."  In fact, there is no reason at all for this movie to have "Ballistic" in the title.  Furthermore, aside from their initial meet-and-greet fight, Ecks and Sever are allies.  Their one fight is about as exciting as you might imagine, though:

It looks like he's going to puke from being tickled too much.

This is a movie where every character mentions that Ecks and Sever are the best at everything, as long as it's deadly.  Naturally, the film builds up to their painfully choreographed fight scene.  The result is...well, less than thrilling.  I never thought I would say this, but it made me look back on the hand-to-hand combat scenes from The Hunted --- where Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones scuffle around for half an hour in an uncomfortable man-hug --- and think "not bad."  The Ecks vs. Sever fight (the only time the "Ecks vs. Sever" subtitle is actually appropriate) is so slow and awkward that I wouldn't be surprised if the stunt coordinator was audibly shouting instructions just below the blaring soundtrack.

Okay, fine.  The title of the movie is pretty awful.  What about the acting?  Honestly, it's a little hard to judge.  The script is atrocious, definitely one of the worst major motion picture scripts to have been made into an actual movie in the past decade, so that should be taken into consideration when judging the actors.  Even with that in mind, I'm going to give the cast a universal thumbs down.  Or up.  Whichever one means they all die by Roman gladiator.  Antonio Banderas, even with his sexy cartoon bee voice, is out of his element here.

Nason-Ecks?

When Banderas is in his comfort zone (giving a smoldering glare at the camera and speaking heavily accented English), he is a decent actor.  Here, he is asked to look tired, haggard, and be an incredible bad-ass.  It doesn't work to his strengths.  Lucy Liu is better known for her semi-comedic roles than her dramatic chops, and this movie is completely without humor.  As for her action movie skills, she was definitely on par with Angela Lansbury in this one.  Miguel Sandoval just looked bored with his lines and Gregg Henry turned in one of the most MWA-HA-HA evil performances I have ever seen in a movie that did not involve world destruction.  I wouldn't say that Ray Park's performance was good, but he is definitely the only person in the cast that can pull off a convincing fight sequence.  Talisa Soto and Terry Chen also lend their charisma-free talents to this film.

Dull, uninspired acting isn't always the cast's fault; the director usually has a share in the blame.  And the first sign that this film's director should be blamed?  Wych Kaosayananda calls himself as "KAOS" in the credits.  And all this time, you thought McG was the most obnoxious director name.  Kaosayanandahas has no subtlety or any sort of rapport with his actors, or else we might have actually seen human emotions in this piece of crap.  I'm guessing that he is supposed to be more of an action director than anything else, since this is allegedly an action movie, but this is one of the worst uses of $70 million I have ever seen.  And that's taking Dragon Wars: D-War into consideration.  Nothing looks good in this film.  Nothing.  In fact, this movie was directed so poorly (and flopped so badly) that KAOS hasn't directed a movie since.  And when you consider how M. Night Shyamalan keeps getting work, that is saying something.

Okay, so this might sound like just an uninspired movie, and not a truly awful one.  Don't be deceived like I was.  This is a bad, bad movie, and it's so incompetent that it's not even fun to ridicule.  Why?  For starters,the movie takes place in Canada.  Unless I'm greatly mistaken, the FBI doesn't operate on foreign soil.  And yet, they form a "trans-national strikeforce" to track down Sever.  How did that get past a copy editor?  And it apparently never occurred to anyone that the Canadian police, armed forces, intelligence community, or the damn Mounties might show up and say "Hey, what's all this aboot you fellas destroying thirty city blocks up here?"  Seriously, they blow up a lot of shit in this movie (without any noticeable fatalities) and leave about a hundred FBI and DIA agents dead on the streets of Vancouver, and there isn't one Canadian cop in this movie.

Pictured: no injuries.

The worst part about all that action is that it's not entertaining.  At all.  Liu and Banderas are uncomfortable (at best) in their action scenes and the best scene (Liu vs. Park) still sucks.  Ray Park is an awesome stuntman, and he looks good in this, his only fight scene in the movie (just another reason this movie is stupid), as long as the action is being shown in real time.  Unfortunately, to make Liu's moves look any good, the scene is shown in slow motion, which just makes Park look incompetent when he doesn't hit her.  There is a lot of hand-to-hand combat in this movie, and that's the best scene.  Even the shoot-em-up scenes are boring and stupid.  If the DIA needs Liu alive to find the boy, why are they using live ammunition on her, including a turret gun and snipers?  And wouldn't snipers be smart enough to take cover when somebody's shooting at them?  Not in this movie, my friends.

And what about the DIA?  In this movie, they're like a rogue CIA offshoot at best, and a bunch of assholes at worst.  Why does anyone want to be in the DIA?  They're filled with men who are cannon fodder to Lucy-freaking-Liu and specialize in twitching after they get shot.  And do you know what happens when they botch a job?  They are encouraged to commit suicide.  That's right, a government agency with a government pension plan is supposed to have its members kill themselves if they screw up.  I'm not buying into that.

To top it all off, the super secret and undoubtedly expensive killer microscopic robot is the stupidest spy weapon I have ever heard of.  And that's saying quite a bit, because I have seen all the Roger Moore Bond movies.  Let's just say that having a microscopic robotic killer that you can inject into your enemy is a good idea, okay?  If that's the case, wouldn't it take millions of dollars to make each mini-bot?  And then what?  You just leave it in the corpse after you use it to kill?  That's not terribly economical.  "But these things would be untraceable, Brian!"  Actually, they wouldn't be, since the DIA performed a thermal scan (for a microscopic robot?) at the airport to prove that the mini-bot hadn't been taken aboard any planes.  So, it is detectable, if you know what to look for.  And since you still need to inject it into your target, that means you either need to stick them with a syringe or hit them with a blow dart for it to enter the bloodstream.  At that point, wouldn't it be just as easy and a few million dollars cheaper to just use poison?

Available for kids parties, Bar Mitzvahs, and assassinations.

What I'm trying to tell you is that this is a film abomination.  It has no redeeming value, not as a target of ridicule or even as a beer coaster.