For X-Men, 'Last' is certainly not least

BY JAN STUART | Newsday Staff Writer

May 25, 2006

It's not easy being blue.

Nor is it a picnic growing up with heavy-lifting telepathic powers, or giant white feathers on your back, or knuckles that morph into steak knives, or eyes that can sear holes through a bank vault packed with last December's fruitcakes.

Living with uniqueness in a world that prizes conformity continues to burden and divide the mutant community of the Marvel Comics-inspired movie series. While there is no talk of a constitutional amendment to ban same-mutation marriage in the latest chapter, coyly titled "X-Men: The Last Stand," there is a "cure" in the works designed to rob its targeted minority population of their aberrant talents.

It is a testament to the thoroughgoing craft and seriousness of purpose with which the first two X-Men installments were made that all of the primary players have returned for this bruising and brooding go-round, which loses little in urgency, complexity or muscularity for being the shortest of the trilogy.

A virtually unrecognizable Kelsey Grammer has entered the fray as the hirsute and blue-complexioned Dr. Henry McCoy, aka Beast. McCoy, who exudes an intelligence and inner fire redolent of Gen. Colin Powell, is quietly standing up for mutant rights in his presidential cabinet post as secretary of mutant affairs.

McCoy's ethos of restraint is echoed by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who advocates for ethical ownership of mutant identity at his school for the gifted. Those voices of reason are increasingly drowned out by mutant supremacist Magneto (Ian McKellen, reining in his "Da Vinci Code" ham). He agitates the bellicose Brotherhood of Mutants, which is up in arms over a ballyhooed new cure financed by a wealthy industrialist (Michael Murphy) bent on ridding his son Angel (Ben Foster) of his mutant bird wings.

Back from the dead to stir things up further, the aptly named Phoenix (Famke Janssen) has been conveniently resurrected after her "X2" lake drowning, when "her powers wrapped her in a telekinetic cocoon." (I'll buy that.) This time out, the telepathic power of Professor Xavier's leading acolyte is being perverted toward destruction, which makes matters very confusing for her mourning fiance Cyclops (James Marsden) and onetime comrades Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry).

The personal dilemmas of the latter two characters take a back seat to the erupting rift between Xavier and Magneto, not to mention some lollapalooza special effects that should inspire regular users of the Golden Gate Bridge to contemplate alternate routes. Jackman still burns with gravitas and charisma as the independent-spirited Wolverine, but there is a little too much churning in Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn's densely populated script to allow the character much breathing space.

"X-Men: The Last Stand" more or less stands on its own legs, but the degree to which one is engaged really depends on one's familiarity with the first two films. Despite the finality implicit in the title, a brief coda following the end-credits reminds us, "X2"-style, that you should never say die, especially when the dear departed has left behind some major fish to fry.