Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
SeeQuant
Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
Married Baby
Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
DCfan
After the first movie, Rogue is now all settled in with the rest of her teammates but things get into a huge mess when the MRD discover where the X-Men are stationed and because of this they are forced to be on the run.We also see Cyclops's love triangle with Jean which is taken to a whole new level of romance.As usal the acting was good from Hugh Jackman, Ian Mckellen, Patrick Stuart, Alan Cumming, James Marsden, Shawn Ashmore, Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen and Halle Berry.Just like with the other one the movie was good especially the post credit scene.
filmtogo
Such a great sequel to the 2000 original X-Men. Nightcrawler played by Alan Cumming has a fantastic opening sequence and an equally good "recruiting" moment with Storm and Jean Grey. Every X-Men (Rogue, Iceman and Pyro joining the team) has his or her moment and their mutant powers are in different ways important for the story. Stryker - the bad guy - is used and played very viciously. Magneto becomes the "Loki" of the story. He and Mystique have to join forces with the X-Men to stop Stryker but at the same time they scheme their own diabolical plan. Once again Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan show what they can do just with their mimics. Strongest players in this game. Sad - very sad - that the third part of this original trilogy was not as good as any of the past and future X-Men movies. This could've been a nearly perfect trilogy.
TownRootGuy
The good version of her! No, I am not a fan of the FC one. This movie has an outstanding cast, excellent action, fantastic FX, spectacular eye candy AND the funny just comes out of nowhere. Bamf! This is a great movie and will probably be my favorite of this set after the next time I see them. I can watch this every year.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"X2" or "X-Men 2" is an American (mostly) English-language film from 2003, so this one will have its 15th anniversary next year. It is the second film from the long-running X-Men franchise that culminated in "Logan" this year, my favorite film of the year so far still and that one got me curious to check out some of the older films from this series. Watched the very first not too long ago and I liked that one, even if for other reasons like this one here. This second film is considerably longer than the first, namely it runs for 2 hours 15 minutes and that's quite a lot. The cast includes many actors that also appeared in the very first and also some from Logan still. But back to X2: Anna Paquin is back too of course, even if obviously far from being as much in the center as she is in the first film. It's not really possible to identify a single character or actor as lead here. It is basically an ensemble performance and it would be interesting to see who has the most screen time. Jackman perhaps? I am not sure. The script is also an ensemble piece as it includes no less than five writers one of them being Bryan Singer who also already directed the first film. Sure 135 minutes is very long, but this amount of writers is perhaps still a bit too much. And there were moments when you could talk about too many cooks spoiling the broth. I would say that this applies mostly to the middle part as these 45 minutes were packed with action, but in terms of story-telling it was a bit of a letdown compared to the first 45 minutes, the best part of the movie. The final 45 minutes are somewhere in-between quality-wise.Anyway, it takes quite a while to understand who the main antagonist is. Early on, it seems as if it may be the character portrayed by Alan Cummings ("The Good Wife"), but that perception changes drastically when we see the antagonist is oh so human only. But he is still powerful enough to convince even Ian McKellen's evil mastermind character to join forces with the good guys. Politics are a major component in here, not only because the President of the United States appears pretty quickly, but yeah, it is once again about tolerance, acceptance and witch-hunt when it comes to mutants. And in the end it seems as if there are losses for both sides when one major character loses her life apparently, perhaps also to keep the writers from having to elaborate further on love stories in the X-Men universe and (SPOILER) even if I like Famke Janssen as an actress (sure more than Romijn and Berry) it may have been an okay decision. Then again I see she is back for future films again, so we will see what explanation they will give us for that. So yeah there are pros and cons for this film. It is obviously not on the same level as "Logan", but it is still a fairly decent achievement overall and a convincing sequel. I just wish they could have kept the second effects-packed third a bit shorter as it really would have helped the film's focus overall. Nonetheless what happened in here did actually get me curious about the third film from the franchise. I will make sure to check it out at some point in the coming weeks/months. X2 gets a thumbs-up from me and I recommend checking it out.
