In a class of its own

FILM REVIEW

X-Men: First Class
DIRECTED BY: Matthew Vaughn
STARRING: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones
CERT: 12A

Sooner or later they all return to their roots. Usually this happens when the well has run dry and there isn’t anything else worthwhile to say, but they just can’t get enough attention. Or money.
In the case of X-Men, there is the added necessity to bury the memory of the last two sequels and their terrible foolishness. You can almost hear them selling the deal: “I know we’ve been crap but here, I’ve an idea, let us tell you how it all began! Oh, and remember us at the box office, won’t you?”
It’s the Hollywood equivalent of the celebrity memoir, crossed with the cynical charm of the desperate politician at election time. Nothing like a few folksy stories about the past and a pint in the pub to show that, really, you’re one of the lads. You just happen to have a bullet-proof limo waiting outside.
The stories are of course classic bull, but some of them are good ones. It’s even possible to find the odd gem in the crowded, dung-filled field of celebrity biography. Sting, for example, is a very wealthy man who doesn’t need my family’s money, especially since he hasn’t made good music in 20 years. But I’ve just finished his memoir, Broken Music, and it’s a fine read.
Sometimes this stuff is just good, even when your soul tells you it’s all wrong. And X-Men: First Class is good; at least for a while.
It opens in 1944, in a Nazi concentration camp, where a traumatised boy unleashes a ferocious power – to the obvious delight of pitiless genetic scientist Sebastian Shaw (Bacon), who has big plans for the youngster. The boy’s name is Erik. We will know him better down the road as Magneto.
Meanwhile a pleasant little rich boy surprises a blue-skinned shape-shifter in his kitchen late at night and they become inseparable friends. The boy is young Charles Xavier. She will grow up to become Raven (Lawrence), and later change her name to Mystique.
Jump forward to 1962 and Erik (Fassbender) is all grown up and hunting for his Nazi tormentors, tracking them down in Argentina and later Miami. Which is where he crosses paths with Xavier (McAvoy), now a dashing young professor with telepathic powers, who’s been recruited by the CIA for his expertise on mutants – some of whom might just be stirring up a spot of global trouble.
Turns out Charles and Erik’s mutual enemy is former friend of the Reich, Mr Shaw, an equal opportunities collaborator now working with the Soviets. Or using them for his own mad purpose, more like.
Shaw has superpowers of his own and he’s gathered a gang of likeminded mutant villains. Charles and Erik do some recruiting of their own, with a little help from the CIA’s Moira McTaggert (Rose Byrne) and an eager Man in Black (Oliver Platt).
These mutant kids include a nerd with huge feet, a young pup who can shoot laser hoops but not very accurately, a human dragonfly who can spit fire balls and a Ron Weasley lookalike with sonic powers, who learns to fly by making very strange screeching noises.
After a bit of training to fine-tune their skills, these chaps are ready to take on the bad guys and save the world – by sorting out the Cuban missile crisis, no less.
And why weren’t we told any of this before now? I think we deserve some answers.
Yes, it all gets a bit silly, right about the time the teenage mutants turn up. Up until then it’s an intelligent and classy story, almost an old-fashioned spy movie that at times feels like one of Sean Connery’s Bond films. Unlike its predecessors – and most of the comic book junk – there’s plenty of room for the actual characters. It’s a fine job by director Matthew Vaughn, whose most recent outing was the entertaining action flick Kick Ass.
As Erik, Michael Fassbender is the star of the show, followed closely by Kevin bacon, showing he’s still got plenty to offer. I like James McAvoy as an actor, but he hams up the sincerity to ridiculous levels and looks a bit of an eejit whenever he puts his fingers to his head to do his mind-reading thing. Which he does a lot.
The rest of the cast is an assortment of random mutants and recognizable characters – including a couple of big name cameos – but there’s plenty of comic book faces to be put to screen for whenever they get around to the almost inevitable sequel. A prequel sequel – now how will that work?