DVD Reviews

X-Men: The Last Stand

• Rating:
• Director: Brett Ratner
• Starring: Famke Janssen
• Details:

A cure for mutancy has been found, sparking even further friction between Professor X's (Stewart) integration-friendly mutants and Magneto's (McKellen) p*ssed-off gang of freaks. It's also kicking off to a level of biblical proportions when Jean (Janssen) seemingly rises from the dead, just like a.. Phoenix (damn, I'm witty).OK, straight to the point - X-Men 3 is a massive disappointment. New characters are introduced briefly, come back (out of nowhere) for another scene and then we never see them again. Older, more reliable characters like Cyclops, Rogue and Xavier are left with nothing more than extended cameos while the likes of Storm are inexplicably given treble the screen time and dialogue of the previous movies, to underwhelming effect. Jean Gray - now Phoenix - spends the entire movie frowning and looking all scary-like, but not actually doing anything cool or scary. She's more or less a sidekick to Magneto's eeeeeeevil man. Which is a shame because there was a wealth of Phoenix material in the comics that had exciting potential for the movie. It's not really Ratner's fault either - he actually manages to string together some decent action sequences - but the studio's for rushing the flick into production, when previous director Singer bailed to do the far superior Superman Returns. Almost all the characters feel underdeveloped and the way in which some of them are killed will have hard core X-Men fans spitting out cola through their noses in angerdisgust. The second X-Men was an extremely well-handled action film with multiple characters, an intriguing love triangle subplot and a dastardly but brilliantly-played villain (Brian Cox).This third installment wastes all the hard work of the previous two by simply being lazy and missing the point of its predecessors. Jackman - as Wolverine - was the heart of the previous films and does his best here, but he's fighting a lost cause. In a word, sh*t.

Review by Mike Sheridan