- UK release: June 2011
- Director: Matthew Vaughn · Writers: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
- Studio / distributor: 20th Century Fox; Marvel Entertainment; Bad Hat Harry Productions
- Genre: Superhero action / Cold War science fiction · Runtime: 132 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland, Atonement) as Charles Xavier; Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Inglourious Basterds) as Erik Lehnsherr; Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) as Raven; Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy) as Hank McCoy; Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Mystic River) as Sebastian Shaw
- IMDb: 7.7 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 86% critics / 87% audience · My rating: 7 / 10
The X-Men films arrived at this point looking distinctly tired. Bryan Singer’s first two were the films that taught Hollywood superheroes could be played straight, but The Last Stand fumbled the ending of that trilogy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the kind of cash-in that makes you wonder whether anyone involved still liked the characters. So the smart move is the one Fox has made here: go back to 1962, before any of it, and hand the keys to Matthew Vaughn, who made Layer Cake and Kick-Ass and clearly fancies a franchise that nobody else can be bothered to take seriously any more.
The setup
Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is a young telepath coasting on charm and a doctorate, while Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) is hunting the man who murdered his mother in a concentration camp. That man is Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a mutant with his own plans for the species, and his scheme drags both of them into the orbit of the CIA just as the Cuban Missile Crisis is winding up. Xavier and Lehnsherr find each other, recruit a handful of other young mutants, and start to build something. The pleasure and the tragedy of the film is that you already know these two men are going to end up on opposite sides, and watching the friendship form is watching a fault line being drawn.
The cast
The film lives or dies on McAvoy and Fassbender, and they carry it comfortably. McAvoy gives Xavier an easy, slightly smug warmth, the privilege of a man who has never had to hide what he is. Fassbender is the better of the two and knows it: his Lehnsherr is all banked fury, and a mid-film sequence of him working through a row of former Nazis across Europe plays like an audition for a Bond villain who happens to be the hero. Jennifer Lawrence, fresh from Winter’s Bone, gives Raven a real ache about wanting to pass as human, and Nicholas Hoult does the nervy, brilliant-but-awkward Hank McCoy well. Kevin Bacon, enjoying himself enormously in velvet and a German accent, supplies exactly the silky menace the plot needs. Some of the younger recruits are thin, but the central pair are strong enough that it scarcely matters.
The craft
Vaughn shoots the period with relish: jets, submarines, split-screen recruitment montages, and a colour palette borrowed wholesale from the Sean Connery Bonds. John Mathieson’s photography keeps it handsome without going soft, and Henry Jackman’s score pushes the brass when it needs to. The effects are mostly good and occasionally rough, and the final act around the Cuban blockade does the thing these films always do, which is to swap character for spectacle just when the character work was the interesting part. But the confidence is the thing. After two films that felt like obligations, this one moves, and moves with style.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is the early Bond pictures, and the film knows it, leaning into the Cold War gadgetry and globe-trotting until it is half a spy film with powers. Set against the X-Men series itself, it is plainly the best entry since X2, with a sharper emotional spine than either of the films that immediately preceded it. Vaughn also brings something of the genre revisionism he showed in Kick-Ass, and there are flashes of the moral untidiness that made Watchmen interesting, though this is a tidier, more crowd-pleasing film than that.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics have welcomed it warmly, sitting around 86%, with audiences a touch higher, and the recurring praise is for Fassbender and for the wit of the period setting. That is all fair. Where I part company slightly is on how much it adds up to. The reviews read as relief as much as enthusiasm, the sound of a franchise being rescued, and rescue is not quite the same as greatness. The Xavier and Lehnsherr material is genuinely good. A fair amount of the rest is competent franchise machinery dressed in a sharp suit.
Verdict
This is a stylish, confident, well-acted reboot, and the two leads give it a weight the series badly needed. I admired it more than I loved it. The Cold War flavour is enjoyable, the friendship at the centre has real pull, and yet the third act tips back into the familiar shape and the supporting cast never quite earns its space. It is a film I am happy to have seen and in no hurry to see again, which is the honest definition of solid rather than special. 7⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the partnership Vaughn set up here became the spine of two more films, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), with McAvoy and Fassbender carrying the younger timeline forward, and Days of Future Past in particular bettering this one. Vaughn went on to Kingsman: The Secret Service, which leant even harder into the spy-film instincts on show here. The film is now widely available on disc and digital, and streams on Disney+ depending on region.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate fantasy violence and one use of strong language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are intense supernatural battles in which mutants use their various superhuman powers against one another. A mutant uses his powers to stab a Nazi in the hand and stomach, and there is a scene in which a man is impaled through the head with a coin. Blood and injury detail is limited.
Language: There is infrequent strong language (‘f**k’); milder terms include uses of ‘bastard’, ‘god’, ‘hell’ and ‘damn’.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
