Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Jannssen, Kelsey Grammer, Ian McKellen

Directed by Brett Ratner

Rated PG-13

3 Pulses

I have to admit, I had no expectations for director Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand after finding out that he was helming it. His bland style usually gets the job done, but not much else, resulting in such mundane movies as The Family Man, Red Dragon and After the Sunset.

If that wasn’t enough to diminish my expectations, The Last Stand has had a bumpy ride coming to fruition. Bryan Singer, the director of both X-Men and X2: X-Men United, left the franchise to do Superman Returns. Unfortunately, with him went his creative team, most importantly his writers. 20th Century Fox, thought they had their man with Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn, but he dropped out. With only six weeks left before shooting, the studio was finally able to plug in Ratner.

The troubled path this film has taken shows, not with Ratner, but with the screenplay by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn. The movie opens with three shotty scenes, one after the other, that are just too much to bear. The first scene takes place twenty years ago; the next is ten years later and finally the not-too-distant future. All of this occurs within a fifteen minute period. If that wasn’t enough, throughout the movie there is cliche dialogue such as “Oh don’t get your panties in a bunch” and “The best defense is a good offense.” Another problem with the screenplay is the last half of the movie when Magneto (McKellen) and the Brotherhood (his army of hundreds of mutants) attack Worthington Labs, a new pharmaceutical facility on Alcatraz. It isn’t believable. There are only six X-Men left to stop them and save the entire human race. If the previous two movies had introduced more X-Men, or given the ones with cameo’s more screen time, then the final battle would be more believable.

The story this time around focuses on two plot lines. The first involves a new pharmaceutical “cure” that is created by Warren Worthington II (Michael Murphy), and designed to rid mutants of their “defects.” His inspiration comes after he learns his son, Warren Worthington III (Ben Foster), is a mutant. (In the comics he was known as Angel, but it is never mentioned in the movie.)

The other plot line focuses on Dr. Jean Grey (Janssen) and her transformation into Phoenix?the beast within her that has been kept dormant throughout the previous movies. What keeps The Last Stand from being sent to comic book movie hell is Janssen’s haunting performance showing the transformation from the nice, loving and caring Grey to the powerful and animalistic Phoenix.

Also of note is the edition of Beast (Grammer). Beast takes up the slack left by Nightcrawler’s absence with plenty of interesting and thorough scenes, and it doesn’t hurt that he is also blue. Grammar really brings his sophistication and whit to create an accurate representation of the comic book character.

Those hoping for something interesting out of Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones) are out of luck, because in the movie he isn’t the stepbrother of Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) like in the comics. He is just one big CG running machine.

The Last Stand is better than the first movie, but can’t touch the second. However, it’s sufficient enough, but just barely.