Bryan Singer retrospective - X2 (2003)

What comes after a massively commercially successful comic book adaptation? Why, the sequel of course! And basically all my comments regarding Singer's X-MEN go double for X-2. In general, Singer does a fine job in creating a slick, entertaining summer blockbuster movie full of spectacular set pieces. At the same time he remains faithful to the original books. Without the need to do all the character establishment heavy lifting, Singer even has room to develop characters and emotional relationships. The love triangle between Cyclops, Jean Grey and Wolverine is developed and Singer sensitively introduces the Jean Grey/Phoenix theme. Singer even gets to probe the intellectual heart of the books with a classic scene in which a teen mutant called Iceman "comes out" to his family. Best of all, the classic conflict between "good" and "bad" mutants is complicated by the insertion of a human arch-villain called William Stryker (Brian Cox) - hell-bent on mutant genocide. Cox is yet another impressive actor added to the roster, and more than makes up for the sub-par performance from Halle Berry and the fact that Cyclops is once again short-changed. The same flaws persist - too many characters, too much material - but it's hard to pin them on Singer. Indeed, despite the proliferation of characters, he does as well as one can imagine in still crafting a coherent movie.

All in all, X-2 was a stylish, entertaining, intelligent comic book movie - a more satisfying feature than the already impressive X-MEN.

X2 went on release in 2003.

Bryan Singer retrospective - X-MEN (2000)

After the brilliant USUAL SUSPECTS and the interesting but directorially rather anonymous APT PUPIL, Bryan Singer hired himself out for the first in the X-MEN franchise. The resulting movie was slick, full of spectacular special effects, and had a convincingly dark and brooding look and feel. It established a high water mark for comic book reimaginings that would only be broken by Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS. To that end, X-MEN represented a return to form, and proof that Singer could handle different types of material - carefully balancing commercial and critical requirements. That said, the movie still had its flaws - namely that the plot is smothered by the need for spectacle and the amount of time it takes to establish the back story of all the different characters. 

To quote my review of LAST STAND: the basic idea "is that there are a bunch of people in the world who are mutants, with special psychic or physical abilities. The world of "normal" people is understandably nervous at having such powerful people in its midst. The mutants react to this fear in one of two ways. The "good guys" try to control their powers and use them only in ethical ways. They are led by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). But another group, led by Magneto, take a more Werner Herzog view of the world. They believe that the natural order of human-mutant relations is aggression and cruelty. The conflict between these two camps forms the back-bone of every X-MEN movie, usually triggered by some half-assed action on the part of bigoted "normal" humans." In this film, the half-assed bigoted action is requiring all mutants to register with the state - a move that spooks Magneto (Ian McKellan) - who lost his family in the Holocaust. In turn, Magneto decides to abduct Rogue (Anna Paquin)- a teen mutant who can leach other's powers - and use her in a bid to turn all the world's leaders mutant, thus rendering their discriminatory policies unthinkable.

Bryan Singer was brave to take on this movie. X-MEN books are some of the biggest selling of all time, which means that there's a vocal and rabid fan-base just waiting for you to trip up. BUT you have to balance the fan-base's desire for accurate details with the demands of the non-fans who still need to understand and engage with "another" summer blockbuster with spectacular action set-pieces. A second challenge - and certainly a bigger challenge than re-imagining BATMAN or SUPERMAN, is that X-MEN has an unwieldy cast of characters, each with their own particular back story that needs to be fleshed out, underneath the wider umbrella mythos. And a third challenge is that X-MEN is intellectually richer than most comics - explicitly discussing bigotry, political accountability and - and that doesn't always sit well with the special effects set-pieces and compressed run-time of your typical summer blockbuster.

Given these triple challenges how did Bryan Singer fare? Well, on the first call, the movie garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. He pleased fans by remaining loyal to the original books - characters made it to the screen largely in tact and the screen-writers mined the rich history of the books for plot lines. The movie went on to spawn two sequels and rumours of an X-4 and WOLVERINE spin-off. To that extent, Singer established the franchise against all odds. The second challenge was to fill in the back story of the book and make all the characters intelligible to the non-fans looking for summer thrills. Here, I'd say that Singer only half succeeded. He successfully established the basic idea of the X-MEN but establishing the back stories to all the significant X-MEN takes forever and they are more or less short-changed by a cramped script. Only Wolverine comes out with anything like the appropriate screen time. As to the third challenge, the intellectual substance of the book has little room to play out given the pressures of establishing character and still fitting in a spectacular end-sequence. Nonetheless, it's clear that we are dealing with issues of prejudice and McCarthyism and than Magneto and Xavier present two reactions to that - broadly speaking an activist/passive stance that some have likened to the difference between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Singer wasn't fully successful on this count either but had at least succeeded in setting up an interesting debate between both sides of the argument.

X-MEN was released in 2000.

BREACH - intelligent character-driven drama

Rubbish poster, great film.

Chris Cooper is outstanding in capturing the enigmatic and contradictory nature of FBI lifer and Soviet-run mole, Robert Hanssen. On one level, Hanssen is an eerily straight-laced man. He attends mass daily, hates women who wear trousers and homosexuals, and loves his country. But Hanssen is running a seamier double-life, where he sells porn films starring his own wife and harbours ludicrous fantasies about Catherine Zeta Jones. He has also been giving the Soviets highly sensitive classified information for the past twenty-odd years. My theory - after a life-long fascination with the Cambridge spies - is that all moles are driven by frustrated arrogance - and Hanssen, as depicted here, conforms with that view. At bottom, their decisions seem less to do with ideology than with vanity and the belief that their own superior intelligence gives them the right to break the rules. In Hanssen's case, he feels his career has been stunted by office politics, and that he is almost doing the US a favour by exposing the weakness of their security systems. And after all, isn't it fun playing a game in which you have everyone fooled?

As foils for Chris Cooper's brilliance, we have Ryan Philippe playing Eric O'Neill, the young wannabe agent who was assigned to keep tabs on Hanssen and eventually brought him in. Philippe plays a similar sort of role to those in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and CRASH. He is always convincing as the quiet young man of integrity who has to face up to the fact that the institutions he grew up believing in are not as peaches and cream as he thought. Laura Linney and Dennis Haysbert are little more than age-appropriate delivery devices.

What I love about this film is its patient expositon of all the facets of Hanssen's character and its unwillingness to trim everything down to a clear answer. This adult attitude is evident even in small choices. Early on, the usually grim-faced Hanssen walks past a car in a parking garage and gives a wry smile. The name plate above the car is of Louis Freeh. There is no attempt to explain to the audience who this is. It's assumed that we've all read a newspaper and get the significance.

It's also a real triumph that although we know how the story ends, BREACH is always suspenseful and tense. Writer-director Billy Ray has done a great job.

BREACH went on release in the USA, Israel, Hungary, Singapore, Iceland, South Africa, Poland, Turkey, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Kuwait, Russia, Greece, Brazil and Mexico earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in Spain on October 11th and in Germany on October 18th 2007.