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X-Men 2 Review by Adrian Hyland Among the most depressingly predictable conversations it’s possible to have is the one about big-budget Hollywood action movies. During these deja-vu ridden encounters I am inevitably confronted with the comment, "It was alright, I suppose, for an action movie", as if the 'action movie' were in some fundamental way inferior to those films of another genre ('Kung-Fu Movies No-One's Ever Seen', for example, or 'Ambitious and Plotless'). Before I can point out that it's surely equally as dumb and reactionary to discriminate against a film because it's an action movie as it is to go to see it because it's an action movie, I find myself hearing the seemingly unstoppable next words out of the person's mouth: "…I mean the special effects were good, but it's not like it's "The Matrix" or anything." (These last words are usually accompanied by that crazed stare that says, "…because, as we all know, "The Matrix" re-invented action movies and subverted forever our notions of the fragile hall of mirrors that is reality…") At this point I have to leave the person to return to their Playstation, because the films that spring to mind as I prepare to defend the 'action movie' are all rather old, and the sad fact is that currently the only remarkable thing about the action genre is how similar and impersonal all the films are. If there is one thing that becomes clear when checking out the latest Hollywood action movies, it is that the art of the action sequence has been horribly trivialised by a blanket reliance on MTV 'beats per minute' editing techniques, churning up the images at such a ridiculously high, fuse-blowing tempo that basically it's impossible to know what the hell is going on. Undoubtedly the trend towards digital editing technology has much to do with this, as virtuoso film editors with a feel for the voluptuous, percussive rhythm of a fight scene are gradually edged out by younger, computer literate, multi-skilled digital editors who are better able to facilitate the often computer generated dreams of the current crop of action directors. In the way that automobiles are now almost all indistinguishably 'space-age' in appearance, so do most action movies now blend into one, suggestive of nothing other than editors eager to meet some unspoken cuts-per-minute quota. There is far more of the poetry of onscreen violence in a good episode of "Tom & Jerry" than there is in any of the current Hollywood efforts, and the only memorable fight scene I can recall from the last couple of years was Hugh Grant and Colin Firths' classic toe-to-toe in "Bridget Jones' Diary". Most of the recent high profile action movies have their origins in the world of comic books, and consequently there has been a shift in emphasis away from the individual action set-piece. The directors of these new films have little to do with the tradition of great action 'auteurs' that can be said to include John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn and Walter Hill, and those of the contemporary directors that do have an instinct for screen violence (like Kevin Reynolds or Kathryn Bigelow) are not considered hip enough to convincingly re-create the comic book milieu in a way that would satisfy the oh-so-discerning 'graphic novel' nerd. The only contemporary filmmaker who can be compared with the artists of the action movie is Michael Mann. He shares with Kurosawa, Peckinpah and Hill the ability to create action scenes with a cathartic quality similar to that of the 'middle-eighth', or break, in a rock song, in that what may (and in the case of Peckinpah and Hill usually does) feel like a conventional narrative is suddenly transformed by a surge of unusually powerful poetic imagery, at which point the viewer may think to himself "…so that's what I was waiting for…". This sets up a rhythm of anticipation and release, and it was this tension that enabled Mann's films "The Last of the Mohicans" and "Heat" to effortlessly transcend their respective genres of 'Western' and 'Cop Thriller'. The imagist power of those two films established Mann as the one visionary action director of his generation, but with his last film ("Ali") Mann experimented with digital cameras and tripped up. The tone was unsure and the fight sequences had a strange, ethereal quality that was far removed from the immediacy of the director's previous action scenes. Whatever Mann chooses to do next, the list of contemporary directors who share with him a gift for action is short. One young director who certainly doesn't have it is Bryan Singer. This is unfortunate given that his new film, the fiendishly boring "X-Men 2", is a hugely expensive action movie, but I get the feeling that delivering mere kinetic thrills is aiming far too low for Singer; he wants to introduce us to a whole other world of 'comic book darkness'. He seems more interested in the look of the film than in the staging and execution of the key action scenes, and I don't remember seeing any blood; that wouldn't have fit into the movie's 'Who turned out the lights?' visual scheme [see ED'S NOTE regarding this at end of review]. He does however show real ingenuity in utilising the bulk of what seems to have been a mysterious on-set surplus of coloured contact lenses. There's a strange paradox at the heart of this film: the convoluted plot seems to be challenging your brain to keep up while the inane dialogue is telling it to switch off. I'd much rather go to see an unashamedly dumb movie than the kind that tries to disguise itself by offsetting the one-dimensional blandness of its 'Hollywood stars' against the reliable gravitas of theatrically trained British actors, and I quickly tired of the 'attack of a thousand boomerangs' audio effects that are now seemingly mandatory in this post-'Matrix' world. Critical faculties are for the most part discarded when people discuss 'Special Effects' movies, as though people were reluctant to criticise what has been sold to us as the cinematic future. It seems that, for some, any special effects are good special effects, but I didn't believe a moment of "X-Men 2", and there is something depressing about seeing an enormous concrete dam halfway through a film and knowing, instantaneously, that it will be destroyed at some later point in a whirlwind of highly unconvincing computer generated imagery, and that this will constitute the action 'climax'. Surely a special effect can't be that 'special' if one notices it? What happened to the concept of "suspension of disbelief"? There is only one CGI moment in recent movies that suggests itself as being worthy of the time and money spent on it: the astonishing panorama of the Warsaw ghetto in Roman Polanski's "The Pianist", a special effect so seamless that it wasn't until afterwards that I realised it had to have been computer generated. The way in which Polanski integrated this manufactured image into the fabric of his film represents special effects artistry at its most fully realised, and though one wouldn't have predicted it, perhaps this visionary director has succeeded where most have failed: in giving us a glimpse of the cinema of tomorrow. ED'S NOTE REGARDING 'X-MEN 2' VISUAL SCHEME Actually, while Singer was clearly going for a dark 'look', it would seem that the under-spec light output of the projector during the movie's media screening took the director's vision to an absurd and unintended extreme… According to a Village Force spokesman (prompted by Onfilm's inquiries), "There was an issue with the light output from the projector… The movies screening in that cinema in the weeks prior to the 'X Men' screening were very light movies and looked good. Since this was a one-off screening and we did not get the time to check the print beforehand, we started screening the 'X Men' and unfortunately could not change anything after the commencement. This issue has been addressed and the current on the Xenon has been altered due to the fact 'X Men' is screening in that cinema in season. This was not a big alteration in current but it has made a difference." Hey guys, here's a wild and crazy idea - why don't you ensure that the light output for ALL screenings of ALL movies is 100%, so that punters can go to the cinema confident they will see what the filmmakers intended them to? A pretty basic customer service, one would have thought… — Adrian Hyland studied post-production at South Seas Film & Television School. He now works as a news editor at TV3. |