Film reviews
Title: X-Men: The Last Stand
Director: Brett Ratner
Stars: Patrick Stewart ; Ian McKellen ; Hugh Jackman ; Halle Berry
Reviewer: Matt Eccles
Rating (out of 10): 7
Review:
With Bryan Singer leaving the X-Men series to direct Superman Returns, it was feared that replacement Brett Ratner couldn’t bear the weight of a franchise that had garnered such near-universal respect and enormous box-office returns. Those concerns proved unfounded, as Ratner’s penchant for sprinting between flashy set-pieces didn’t do any harm to a film whose main characters had already been firmly established.
This time out the mutants battle for control of a serum that relieves them of their special powers. Meanwhile, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is resurrected as Phoenix, whose seemingly limitless powers waver dangerously between good and evil. A thin story, then, but this only serves as a template for more spectacular power struggles between the opposing mutants. The main protagonists are played solidly as ever by Patrick Stewart (Prof. Charles Xavier), Ian McKellen (Magneto), Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Halle Berry (a much more prominent role as Storm). The new characters are less successful if only because there are too many of them, hence the screen-time they jostle over tends to hamper rather than heat-up the proceedings.
So while this third instalment doesn’t quite maintain the momentum of its impressive predecessors, it’s still a worthy addition to the series and pacy enough to leave behind most misgivings.