The Better Men

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, Fox’s fourth X-Men movie, is a good international adventure masquerading as a superhero movie. It’s also overstuffed with plot (a ridiculous six screenwriters are credited) and anonymous characters.

The studio saved money by hiring little-known young performers and skilled character actors, but not having recognizable faces means it can be difficult to keep track of the interchangeable youngsters and their powers. While Michael Fassbender (HUNGER) and James McAvoy (ATONEMENT) are very fine actors, they lack the star charisma a large-scale action picture like FIRST CLASS needs. It could also have used a more mature director than Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS), who sets the film in 1962, but has little to no idea what life in 1962 was like. Sorry, you six (!) writers, but teens weren’t saying “groovy” or “whatever” in 1962.

Judging from what’s here, however, Vaughn demonstrates a technical proficiency that would make him a reasonable candidate to direct a James Bond movie. FIRST CLASS leaps easily from one continent to another, though most of it was filmed in England (and Pinewood Studios), and imagines an unusual men-on-a-mission scenario in which a team of talented but raw soldiers take on a megalomaniac on the verge of starting World War III.

Kevin Bacon is excellent as a Nazi named Sebastian Shaw (nee Kurt Schmidt), who assembles a squad of evil mutants to engineer the Cuban Missile Crisis and start World War III. Opposing Shaw are best friends Erik Lehnsherr (Fassbender) and Charles Xavier (McAvoy), mutants themselves who recruit their own mutants and train them to harness their powers for the forces of good. For Erik, the mission is a personal one to get back at Shaw for murdering his mother in a concentration camp.

Like earlier X-MEN outings, FIRST CLASS bears down heavily on themes of tolerance and comfort within one’s skin, even if it’s blue or made of fur. Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar nominee for WINTER’S BONE, gives the best performance among the younger actors. January Jones (MAD MEN), who took her role as ice queen Emma Frost as an excuse to appear immobile, is by far the worst, though Vaughn tries to make up for it by clothing her in as little material as possible.

Sets, costumes, and John Dykstra’s visual effects are first-rate—a sure sign that Vaughn knows the value of a budget. The film’s highlight is its beach-set finale, an ambitious action sequence with submarines, missiles, jet planes, and a surprisingly rich dramatic climax for a comic book movie.