x-men Photo

X-Men: The Last Stand

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen

Directed by: Brett Ratner

RS: 1.5of 4 Stars

The first twenty-minutes of director Brett Ratner's X film are actually pretty good, but then it devolves into an incoherent and ridiculous mess. While director Bryan Singer's first two contributions to the trilogy had a heart -- something hard to pull off in any comic-book adaptation, X3 is devoid of anything that even remotely resembles a pulse. Ratner completely wastes the talents of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, turning their dueling yin-and-yang characters into one-note wonders. And a resurrected Famke Janssen, very dead at the end of the last film, looks like she's wondering how fast she can go back to resting in peace. By the end of Last Stand, after suffering through its umpteenth explosion and lame line of dialogue, you'll be left pondering why Hollywood can't ever let a good thing rest.