I bought this DVD to replace a VHS tape. The film is great and a must have.

I have enjoyed ALL of the X-Men movies so this one is no exception. I'd recommend them all if you can find someone willing to give them up!

"X-Men" is based on the Marvel comic-book series and hit the big screen in 2000. Directed by Bryan Singer, the film stars - amongst others - Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Halle Berry and Rebecca Romijn.

Mutants are seen as the next step in humankind's evolution and born with a slightly different genetic makeup - a variation that generally brings a superpower with it. You won't necessarily be able to tell just by looking at someone they're a mutant, however - in many cases, mutants look just like normal humans. In fact, only three of the characters in the film - Toad, Mystique and Sabretooth - look anyway different. In most cases, a mutant won't even know that they are a mutant until they reach puberty - which is generally when their powers 'switch on'. Throw in an unhealthy dose of widespread anti-mutant sentiment, and an over-complicated adolescence gets even worse.

Rogue is one such teenager. The poor girl enjoys her first kiss, and sees her young boyfriend collapse into a coma. Unfortunately for Rogue, her mutant superpower is destined to make her lonelier than most : skin-on-skin contact with another human will see her absorbing that person's life-force. (Although she doesn't know it at first, touching another mutant will also see her - briefly - gaining that mutant's superpower). In a blind panic, she flees - running more or less randomly to small-town Alaska. There, she finally has a bit of luck - when she runs into Wolverine, a cagefighter who's also a mutant. Originally known as Logan, Wolverine has an adamantium skeleton, a very sensitive nose, and a hyperactive healing factor. (You can injure him - he just won't stay injured for very long). However, he doesn't have much of a past - Wolverine's life is a mystery even to him. Unfortunately, the pair have barely made their introductions before they're dragged into a war...

On their way out of town, Rogue and Wolverine are attacked by Sabretooth - a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, led my Magneto. Luckily, two X-Men called Storm and Cyclops arrive to help, and take the pair back to their base in New York State. The initial assumption is that Magneto wanted Wolverine for some reason. The X-Men's leader - Professor Charles Xavier, the world's most powerful telepath and a one-time friend of Magneto's - wants to find out why. He asks Wolverine agrees to stay a little while and, in return, the Prof will try to help Logan remember his past. Rogue, meanwhile, is enrolled at the Professor's School for Gifted Youngsters. The school could be viewed as a cover of sorts : the Professor's abilities are not public knowledge, though the 'gifted youngsters' are actually mutants. The purpose of the school is to train young mutants how to properly - and responsibly - control and use their powers. The Professor also believes humans and mutants can live peacefully, side-by-side - Magneto, on the other hand, disagrees.

Magneto is not alone in his belief : Senator Kelly - a 'standard', though influential, human - sees mutants as something to be feared and, therefore, requiring control. The Senator very strongly advocates the Mutant Registration Act, though he wants even more than that. "If it were up to me", he says "I'd lock them all away". If it weren't for people like Kelly raising the stakes and talking of imprisoning people without trial, this war may never have needed fought...

A cracking superhero movie overall. There's a bit more of Wolverine than any of the other heroes, though there is a heavy side-order of Rogue - who I liked a lot more onscreen, than did in print. (I was very impressed with Paquin's performance as Rogue, and also Romijn as Mystique. A member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, Mystique is a shapeshifter. However, while she doesn't look human in her natural form, she does look very cool). The sparring between Cyclops and Wolverine also worked very well, and provided a few comic moments. I wasn't too impressed with Storm, though - her contribution to the movie was pretty much non-existent. That may well have been down to the writing, but I'm not sure Halle Berry was all that bothered about making the most of her screen-time. Still, other than that, a very enjoyable show.

The special effects are good. The characters are simple and varied enough to make us like that universe of monstrous mutants that look just like us but can turn into whatever they want. Welcome to Carrie, Christine, Firestarter, the Tommyknockers and many other Stephen King paranormal beings and situations. Of course, this film adds to that berserk universe a good old American wrapping but with a twist. The statue of liberty standing on its nice little island as the symbol of what it is called after and yet looking like a stiletto stabbing the sky and jutting out of a flat no man's seascape. The twist is in the fact that it is this very statue that is going to be the epicenter of the destruction of all the heads of states assembled at the United Nations for the general assembly of this world's forum. This American wrapping is the standard bigot position of a senator against mutants, against people who are different, who rejects them and kills them as fast as possible. And the twist is that this senator is kidnapped by the bad mutants, transmuted himself by them and then discarded to die in any odd place away from them. And before dying he is saved by the good mutants and he even comes to like them. Finally the main twist is that there are good mutants and in this film, temporarily, they win and save humanity from a cataclysm that would have destroyed both humanity and mutant-dom. Then the rest is not even sentimental episodes. It is pure action and mission and some fights, and a lot of visual special effects. That makes a nice entertaining film though on no matrix whatsoever except maybe the very very distant faraway relation to a certain Quasimodo in Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo: the ugly monster is the savior of the beautiful gypsy girl all the normal Parisians want to victimize and kill.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Looking back on this movie now, after having watched a plethora of super hero movies, I can honestly say this is a decent movie, but not a GREAT one.

This movie was actually one of my first introductions to the world of super heroes (I'd only previously seen the first two Spider-Man movies before watching this and hadn't ever picked up a comic book) so I look back on it with a sense of nostalgia if nothing else. The plot is essentially the essence of the X-Men comics: people who were born different vying for acceptance in a world that fears and hates them, while attempting to stop the "villain" from carrying out his evil plot. (I say "villain" because I'm not really sure if Magneto counts as a villain, if you get right down to it. He and Professor Xavier are basically two sides of the same coin. But, I digress.) It has generally good acting, with one or two exceptionally excellent or horrid performances, and the script...well, it works, usually. What this movie is, more than anything, is a setup for X2, which is by far the best of the series and (in my opinion) one of the better super hero movies in existence. But this first X-Men movie is a solid effort, and a fun watch, if only because Ian McKellen or Patrick Stewart are in it (for the movie buffs) or because there are explosions (for the action fan). And even I, who is generally underwhelmed by the character of Wolverine, have to admit that Hugh Jackman played him perfectly. The only other part I've seen so well-cast is Aragorn of The Lord of the Rings.