Solid film, but gets a little lost near the end. The film is based upon one of the all-time most classic X-Men stories. Besides tweaking it to accommodate what the previous films have established and making Wolverine the star of the story, it sticks pretty well to the original concept. Most of the characters have appeared previously, and all the actors once again do a great job in their roles. For their limited screen time, the new characters have some memorable moments. Quicksilver, in particular, has possibly the best moment in the entire film. The weakest link is Peter Dinklage’s Bolivar Trask. It was an odd casting choice, but he has the acting skills to make up for it. However, the character is fairly bland. A good comic book villain is either evil or misguided, and Trask just doesn’t bring the conviction to sell his misguided ideas. The plot risks getting confusing at time, but juggles the past and future pretty well. Late in the film, there’ kina of a “What now?” moment, where there suddenly seems to be a loss of direction and we’re not sure who the heroes are supposed to be stopping. Luckily, a pretty action-packed finale alleviates this. The action sequences, especially those in the future, are solid and are surprisingly violent. (In fact, this film is a “hard” PG-13. There’s brutal, but generally bloodless, violence, a fair amount of profanity including on “F-Bomb,” and a hard to miss shot of nudity.) Like any story involving time-travel, there are some alterations that occur when it’s all said and done. While many fans will be happy to see some that some of the things that they despised have now apparently never happened, it also means that things that they did enjoy may have also never happened. There’s a small scene after the credits, but only this biggest comic geeks will understand it.
**** out of *****