Star: Famke Janssen

Taken 2 (2012) – Liam Neeson and Maggie Grace

This movie takes half an hour to get warmed up, after a bit too long with the non-action backstory drama. But once it gets going about half an hour in, it turns roughly into what we know and expect from the first Taken movie. But even with all that backstory building, it’s really much ado about nothing early on, because this movie’s backstory is still quite reliant on knowing how the first movie went down.

Seeing Liam Neeson run around town, away from those who intend to kidnap him and his family members, really highlights the kind of fragile, awkward movement that only the trained eye could clock onto in the first movie. The fight scenes are also a bit weaker this time round, with a lot of camera angle flashing – a serious lack of rolling footage that lasts more than a fraction of a second – this is a classic budget coverup tactic for actors who can’t really fight, but the last movie didn’t have so much of this going on – not because Neeson could fight any better, but because it must have had a better screen combat team, including choreographers assisting him and stunt doubles standing in for him etc. I guess they’ve cut the budget in that department for Taken 2.

On the plus side, there’s realistic tactics displayed again by Neeson’s character Bryan Mills here, including things we didn’t see in the last movie. Such as memorising a journey taken when kidnapped, by counting seconds while listening out for sounds and driving style changes all along the way, even while blindfolded, in order to re-trace the same route later on; and using items concealed in clothing, to facilitate escape (in this case, a mini cellphone). Then measuring distance while on the phone by counting seconds between an explosion on each end.

On the plus side also, Maggie Grace‘s acting has improved slighty since the last movie. Not massively so, but it’s a little bit better than it was before. Just a little bit.

Around an hour in, things really warm up, as Bryan instructs his daughter Kim on how to help him and her mother to escape. There’s a good 10 minutes of fast action from here – mainly a high speed car chase where Kim is in the driving seat. This, combined with her helping him to escape earlier on, makes this movie very much about the daughter playing the action hero while the father himself is a somewhat immasculated man – a theme we saw from the very beginning while he’s meekly trying to win over his ex wife, who he treats like royalty, even though she’s been with another man for some time. All this girl power and immasculation stuff probably ticks a few boxes for the producers, but makes for a much weaker action movie – it’s much less enjoyable – it’s much weaker in its highs, and it’s much stronger in its lulls – it’s got less pleasantry, and more unpleasantry, which is no mean feat considering the nature of the last movie. It’s not until the last 20 minutes (15 if you take out the closing credits) when Bryan really does his thing and tries to rescue his ex wife.

All in all, it’s not massively different from the first Taken movie, and it has some slightly fresh ideas of its own, but it’s clearly a weaker movie over all, while still being mildly entertaining enough and on-genre enough to earn a Below Average rating I’d say. And that may even be a bit generous considering all the hard-to-watch monotonous and unpleasant chunks that I found myself fast-forwarding through in the knowledge that I was missing absolutely nothing from the goodness of the movie and even saving myself the pain of the screeching background noise that I can only assume is a desperate attempt to add flesh on the bones of the movie and build some kind of suspense & momentum when in fact it really serves only to irritate, not dissimilar to annoying noisy adverts jumping out and disturbing your mood while trying to enjoy a decent YouTube video for example (I’m sure that’s done as a psychological warfare tactic, and not really for the ad revenue).

Bryan’s ex wife in this movie and the last, called Lenore Mills, is played adequately by Famke Janssen who you may recognise as Jean Grey aka Phoenix from the X-Men movie series prior to Sophie Turner taking over that role for X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).

The main baddie in this movie – the father of the main baddie in the previous movie – is played by Rade Šerbedžija (from Tekken 2). He’s not a bad actor but he seems to have a habit of appearing in slightly flopped sequels with similar names. Watch out for him if you want to make a movie called anything like Token 2 or Toucan 2!

X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) – Hugh Jackman

This movie gets off to a weird but interesting start, with cool but confusing action scenes played out by low quality young actors.

As the movie continues, the confusing weirdness continues along with lots of hot-headed drama and a bit of cool action, right through till the end. It’s too drama heavy for my taste, but still it’s not a bad movie – I’d rate it Bang Average along with all the other X-Men and Wolverine movies to date since they all have a similar mix of pros & cons. Just enough good stuff to pique our interest, but not enough to thoroughly entertain and make it frequently rewatchable. It’s worth watching as part of a marathon of viewing all the X-Men movies in order of release date, but I’d avoid watching it as a standalone movie on its own merit outside of the wider saga since it provides valuable context for understanding what remains a weird & unclear movie even with that context.

Unlike previous X-Men and Wolverine movies, this one features a good amount of screentime from both the younger generation and the older generation of Professor X and Magneto, although the younger generation gets a slightly priority here.

Hugh Jackman plays Logan / Wolverine as usual. James McAvoy plays the younger Professor X, and Patrick Stewart plays the older Professor X. Michael Fassbender plays the younger Magneto, and Ian McKellen plays the older Magneto. Jennifer Lawrence plays Mystique who has a very vital role in this movie.

Peter Dinklage plays arguably the main antagonist, Dr Trask, although the real enemies to the X-Men are the Sentinels he creates to hunt down and kill all mutants, and movie revolves more around the team stopping Mystique from killing him since it’s his death that gets his Sentinel program funded so Wolverine went back in time to stop her from killing him in order to prevent the extinction of all X-Men and mutants in the future.

Halle Berry gets a little screentime as Storm, and Famke Janssen gets even less screentime as Jean Grey. Nicholas Hoult gets a fair amount of screentime as Beast, although his character was not particularly vital to the plot. There were a few other characters from the usual squad too, but the important core characters have already been mentioned.

The movie ends on a happy note, with disaster averted and everyone alive – even Jean Grey and Scott Summers who were both killed off in previous movies. Then at the end of the closing credits there was what seemed to be a little teaser scene – indeed it was a sneak preview of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and it looks quite captivating.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand (2006) – Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

There’s a lot of drama in this movie, and some decent action, and some intriguing aspects to the plot. Overall I rate it Bang Average on a par with the last couple of X-Men movies.

This movie is centred around the non-mutants (in this movie called ‘humans’ for some odd reason as if being a mutated human is equal to being a non-human) having found a mutant who has the ability to strip powers from any mutant who goes near him. From this ability, a ‘cure’ has been made, delivered in needle format. Magneto and friends team up against the ‘humans’, with the core team of X-Men trying to prevent a war. And the key concept that really defines this movie, aside from the ‘cure’ and Magneto’s antics, is Jean Grey coming back from the dead and having unlocked her Class 5 powers making her more powerful than anyone else – she even kills Professor X although that’s because she has a split personality between malevolent and benevolent sides, due to Professor X having repressed her powers for everyone’s protection since she was a child. Eventually, Magneto’s crew wage a siege on Alcatraz where the ‘cure’ is being made, but Magneto gets hit with the ‘cure’, then just as things are about to end amicably, the military fire on Jean Grey and this makes her angry, which is a big problem – only Logan can stop her by appealing to her heart before stabbing and killing her. What kind of culture is this movie trying to nurture with behaviour like this?

The cast is pretty much the same as usual, with Hugh Jackman playing Logan aka Wolverine, Ian McKellen playing Eric Lehnsherr aka Magneto, Patrick Stewart playing Professor Charles Xavier, Famke Janssen playing Jean Grey aka Phoenix, Halle Berry playing Ororo Munroe aka Storm, Anna Paquin playing Marie aka Rogue, James Marsden playing Scott Summers aka Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn playing Raven Darkholme aka Mystique, Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake aka Ice Man, Aaron Stanford as John Allerdyce aka Pyro, as well Daniel Cudmore as Peter Rasputin aka Colossus the metal man who always seems missing from the main set of credits for some odd reason.

Plus we get to see a lot more of Kelsey Grammar playing Dr Henry ‘Hank’ McCoy aka Beast, who’s involved in politics with the humans. And we get to see a bit more of Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde who can phase through walls, floors and ceilings, or people – anything really.

We also get the odd interesting new character, such as Vinnie Jones playing Juggernaut who can walk through walls and anything else – he is an unstoppable object when on the move. And Ben Foster plays a mutant with large wings like a bird, called Angel, and his father runs the lab that developed the ‘cure’, and his father wants to ‘cure’ him, but he escapes, then comes back in the end to save his father’s life, using his unique abilities.

Speaking of Ben Foster, the LGBT theme is a bit over the top in this movie, with men dressing up in women’s clothes too, and even calling themselves girls. It’s a bit weird, but that’s Hollywood for you – sometimes they can’t help themselves, and sometimes it seems like a key driver that helped get the movie sponsored.

Sequels

Now that we’ve completed the early trilogy, since Xavier died in this one, the following X-Men movies go off on a tangent to focus on the story of Logan / Wolverine, and simultaneously a few prequel general X-Men movies are made. So there’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), then X-Men First Class (2011) and it alternates back and forth between Wolverine movies and prequel movies, with releases in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, and then there’s Dark Phoenix in 2019 which very much resembles Captain Marvel from the same year (strong lead female with energy powers). By this time, Jean Grey (aka Phoenix) had been re-cast and is now played by Sophie Turner, the star of Dark Phoenix – the same Class 5 mutant that should have stole the show in X-Men 3: The Last Stand but her role as the most powerful mutant ever wasn’t properly capitalised on and most of the marketing placed more emphasis on Halle Berry (Storm) who was a big star at the time since she played the main Bond girl in Die Another Day (2002) and took the lead role in Catwoman (2004). Dare I say, there’s also been a recent X-Men spinoff in the form of the Deadpool trilogy starring Ryan Reynolds, which features Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I’m not a big fan of that toilet humour genre myself though, so I’m not recommending those Deadpool movies – just mentioning it for completeness.

X-Men 2: X2 (2003) – Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen

X2 (2003)

This movie gets off to a better, much quicker start than the first X-Men movie, as an angry mutant storms the White House.

It’s nice to see the concepts of the school and of Cerebro being expanded upon early in this movie too, after being briefly established in the last movie but not very much capitalised on.

The action builds up to really interesting crescendo after the half hour mark, when Stryker invades the mutants’s school after Magneto’s tip-off, with only Logan and a few kids to hold down the fort against swat team style special forces operatives pouring in from helicopters. And the action gets even more interesting when Magneto makes his escape from his plastic prison, before the one hour mark.

The action in the back-end of the movie is a bit less intriguing, and a lot more chaotic with plenty of tense moments. This is a classic example of how more action doesn’t necessarily equate to a better action movie. While the quality of the first hour was on a part to be Above Average, the less pleasant second half brings down the overall rating to Bang Average in my opinion. There’s a pretty cool scene around the 2 hour mark though, as Xavier has a little word with the POTUS while making time stand still for everyone else in his office.

The cast is much the same as the last movie, with Hugh Jackman playing Logan aka the Wolverine, Patrick Stewart playing Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen playing Magneto, Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe aka Storm, Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, James Marsden as Scott Summers aka Cyclops, Anna Paquin as Rogue, Rebecca Romijn as Raven Darkholme aka Mystique, Brian Cox as William Stryker, Alan Cumming as Kurt Wagner aka Nightcrawler, Aaron Stanford as Pyro, Shawn Ashmore as Ice Man, and a few more interesting characters besides them, but that covers the extended core cast pretty well already.

X-Men (2000) – Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart

X-Men (2000)

The distressing opening scene that builds the backstory of this movie’s main antagonist (Magneto) consists of little more than screaming, crying and white noise sound effects. Not a good start for those who prefer smoother action hero movies while trying to steer clear of horror and unpleasant drama genres. Fortunately, this only lasts a few minutes, and then the drama scenes become increasingly interesting until we see Logan (aka the Wolverine) in an old-school no-holds-barred cage fight around 10 minutes in. That scene is still full of white noise though – not particularly pleasant on the ears. Someone needs a word with the atmospherics director, else at least the head of sound.

The real top-tier action begins at 13 minutes in, as the losing cage fighter suspects Logan of being a mutant, then tries to stab him in the back, at which point Logan then reveals his hidden weapons and his true colours.

By the end of the first hour, we’ve had a good dose of action, the sci-fi plot is quite intriguing and the drama scenes are generally quite interesting for an action movie fan. The miserable gritty stuff from early on seems well behind us now, thankfully.

Core Cast & Characters

All the main characters were quite well established in the first hour, including all the main members of the X-Men team led by Professor Charles Xavier aka Professor X, a powerful mind-reading & mind-controlling telepath played well by Patrick Stewart (perhaps best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek), as well as the main antagonist (Magneto, a powerful telekinetic of metal, played equally well by Ian McKellen who looks a bit like Ron Paul), and his main accomplices.

The movie mainly follows the life of Logan aka the Wolverine, played very well by Hugh Jackman. Among his fellow X-Men, are Ororo Munroe aka Storm who has weather-control powers like wind, thunder & lighting, while occasionally displaying glowing eyes like Thor and is played adequately by Halle Berry; as well as Famke Janssen (with vibes of Jennifer Garner from Marvel’s Elektra, or Gal Gadot from DC’s Wonder Woman) who is also a telepath (called Doctor Jean Grey) but has not yet learnt to fully control and harness her powers. There’s also Cyclops who shoots a laser beam from his eye and is played adequately by James Marsden. Logan also befriends a girl called Rogue who has the ability to take people’s powers from them, and is played adequately by Anna Paquin. On the baddies’ team there’s Sabretooth who’s like a stronger but slower version of the Wolverine and is played adequately by Tyler Mane (behind heavy mask & makeup); as well as a weird shapeshifting unclothed blue woman with reptilian scales called Mystique played by Rebecca Romijn, and an equally weird leaping long-tongued creature called Toad played by Ray Park.

The X-Men vs The Avengers

This whole setup of so many people with different superpowers in one movie, reminds me of the more recent Avengers movies by Marvel, although I have to say, everyone seems a lot better co-ordinated in the X-Men movies. This is probably mostly due to there being a single clear leader in Xavier who everyone generally trusts & respects, but it may also be partly due to there being a different intention behind the script.

In the Avengers movies, Captain America tries to take the leadership role but he’s clearly one of the weaker Avengers, or at least somewhere in the middle, so it doesn’t really work, and Iron Man tends to steal the show every time although it should probably be Thor since his scenes are generally the best and he’s a practically indestructible deity, as opposed to a feeble man in a suit or an enhanced man with a shield.

But they have to downplay Thor’s abilities and role to prevent him overshadowing the other Avengers since they’re all pretty feeble in comparison. Even in his own movies he’s frequently stripped of his powers to make his dilemmas credible. I mean Thor alone is not much less powerful than Thor with all the Avengers by his side, considering how he sometimes mows down entire fields full of alien warriors with his lightning powers and his practically unstoppable weapons, so people like Captain America and Black Widow and Hawkeye by his side can’t really add much value on the battlefield unless Thor’s role & powers are heavily downplayed while the others are massively overplayed. Guys like the Hulk and Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch seem powerful enough to add value to Thor’s team, but even their powers are typically downplayed in order to allow the weaker Avengers to still look good. Why not just bunch the best ones together to form a better version of the Avengers? Because it doesn’t suit the agendas. They need Captain America as their front man at all costs, it seems, even if he’s the least interesting of all and is feeble in comparison to the likes of Iron Man, Hulk and Thor.

The second hour

The second hour of X-Men continues with a lot of scene setting still. There appears to be a lack of direction to this movie – the introduction phase seems hard to move past. But eventually we switch into a serious battle which merges into the final action scene. These final action scenes certainly have plenty of time to be delivered diligently – they’re well built, not rushed at all, and the mild drama scenes that finish off the movie are pretty well poised and well delivered too. But as a result of going from a prolonged bout of scene setting, straight into the semi-final and final action scenes, it seems like we’re missing a layer or two in the middle somewhere. This movie seems a bit one dimensional for this reason. Fortunately, it can be treated as the first movie of many in the X-Men movie series, and this is kind of its saving grace, turning it from a movie that’s too short, missing plot development in the middle, to a movie that can be treated as just the first chapter of a well developed story – not dissimilar to an old comicbook in this respect. Nevertheless, when rating this as a standalone movie, I have to acknowledge its lack of plot direction and lack of development in the middle. While the team is well coordinated, and the sides are well opposed, and the scene setting was decent, and the ending was cute and nicely multi-layered, it seems Xavier was out of action for the most part, offering no leadership of any kind in the second half of the movie. His powers are massively under-utilised and the heroes seem short of a mission, aim or direction. For these reasons I have to rate this movie just OK, but if these things were corrected it could have been rated several levels higher.

The school setup, with kids having superpowers being trained in a secret school for mutants, could have been a bigger factor in this movie too, adding plenty of value to the script, but that could have caused the main characters to lose screen time, or made the movie inappropriately long. So I don’t blame them for keeping this aspect of the plot quite simple and untapped into. Still, if I remember correctly, this school setup becomes a big thing in at least one of the future movies in the X-Men movie series, so the opportunity’s not totally wasted.

Sequels and Spin-Offs

If you enjoyed X-Men (2000) and wish to watch its immediate sequels next, check out X2 (2003) then X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) to complete the initial trilogy from the noughties.

After that, you may wish to move on to watching the spin-off Wolverine trilogy (released 2009, 2013, 2017) alongside watching the four X-Men prequels (released 2011, 2014, 2016, 2019). Since they have inter-splicing release dates they’re probably all worth watching in one long list in order of release date rather than separating them into Wolverine spin-offs and X-Men prequels.

Following all of that, you may wish to move onto the Deadpool trilogy (released 2016, 2018, 2024) where Hugh Jackman also features as Wolverine. Or if Ryan Reynolds’ toilet humour is not your cup of tea, you may wish to swerve all the Deadpool movies. Perhaps instead move on to the Fantastic Four movies from the noughties (released 2005 & 2007) starring Jessica Alba, if you haven’t already seen them recently, since they’re also based on Marvel Comics, and just like the original X-Men trilogy, were also released prior to the beginning of the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) by Marvel Studios, Phase One of which officially began with Iron Man (2008) then The Incredible Hulk (2008).

There’s also been a recent Horror genre spin-off from the X-Men movie series, called The New Mutants (2020), but that’s the wrong genre for this website and for me personally, so I’ll be swerving it. It appears to lack strong cast members anyway.

GoldenEye (1995) – Pierce Brosnan and Gottfried John

I believe Pierce Brosnan makes a relatively bland & robotic Bond compared to the three greats before him; and this, probably by no mere coincidence, is exemplified in the first minute of this movie, when he does the “turn left and shoot” pose. Sean Connery holds his spare hand out to the side as a counter-balancing hand, a bit like would be done in fencing but with his hand facing down as if holding a pad for a boxer to throw an uppercut at, kind of like a surfer’s balancing pose; Roger Moore holds his gun with both hands; Timothy Dalton lets his spare hand hang to his side, with a realistic balance of tension & relaxation; then Pierce Brosnan leaves his spare hand down, similar to Dalton but more floppy, and his whole body flops round at the same time, very nonchalantly like a careless lifeless teenager or a synthetic dummy, or someone who has never trained any kind of martial art before but wants to portray dominant tactical movement nonetheless. The way he pulls the door open 25 minutes in, is no different. It’s like he’s huffing & puffing while trying to act slick, when really he’s all floppy and the door is the dominant entity between the two of them! Having said that, as bland and uncoordinated a Bond as he may be, the fact his movies are much more highly funded than his outstanding predecessors’ movies were, kind of brings his movies up to the same level as most of those Bond movies before him. The fight scene at 25 minutes in, for example, when James gets through the door on the boat he’s sneaked on, is all flashy camera switching. There’s no genuine martial arts acumen or even athletic acumen on display, but good cinematography has ways of compensating for this, and the tempo and general vibe of that fight scene was not bad to be honest.

Backtracking now – the opening scenes at the very start of this movie are a bit ‘Mission Impossible esque’ with jumping down cliffs and entering rooms through ceilings.

In the first 5 minutes we’re introduced to one of the other main characters – Alec Trevelyan (Agent 006) played by Sean Bean. I’m usually a fan of his but I’m not a fan of his demeanour in this movie – he hasn’t reached his prime as an actor yet, and he’s got a rather repulsive smug look on his face in this movie in my opinion. Either the role doesn’t suit him, or it came too early in his career for us to really see the best of him. Anyway, he’s one of the main supporting actors in this movie.

Another of the main supporting actors we meet in the first 10 minutes is Gottfried John who is best known for his performance as the main villain in this movie – General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, who is also head of the Russian Space Division but turns on his own countrymen and goes rogue.

After we get a ridiculously unrealistic mid-air recovery of a nosediving passengerless plane to end the opening scenes, this leads into the theme tune by a croaky voiced Tina Turner in her mid 50s. It’s a funky tune but it’s not got quite the same kick as the best Bond theme tunes, for my taste. Another singer could have sang the same lyrics to the same tune and yet done it much better than Tina, I think.

One of the main Bond girl from this movie is Xenia Onatopp, who is played quite well by Dutch actress Famke Janssen (she also played Liam Neeson’s wife in the Taken movie series, and Phoenix in the early X-Men movies of 2000, 2003 and 2006) and now she plays the main female baddie in GoldenEye – she’s General Ourumov’s sidekick, who together with him, steals a state-of-the-art EMP-proof helicopter from a miliary demo after killing and impersonating an admiral then a couple of pilots. She also makes orgasmic noises after shooting & killing people.

Before the end of the first half hour, we meet the second of the main women in this movie, Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova, who is played by Polish actress Izabella Scorupco – she’s not a bad actress and is quite pretty too – definitely above average for a Bond girl but not on a par with the best of them for my taste. She’s a non corrupt programmer at a Russian top secret base that Ourumov & Onatopp shoot up. To their surprise, she manages to survive, then gets caught, escapes, gets caught again, and befriends James Bond who she’s being held prisoner with around half way through the movie. When we first meet her, we also met her colleague, a Russian programmer & hacker called Boris Grishenko (played alright by Scottish actor Alan Cumming, the main baddie in Spy Kids) and he is working with Ourumov & Onatopp.

The script & screenplay get pretty intense & captivating as Bond & Simonova are questioned by Defense Minister Dimitri Mishkin (played pretty well by Tchéky Karyo, who also plays corrupt Inspector Jean-Pierre Richard, the main antagonist in Kiss Of The Dragon, a Jet Li classic). Simonova then points the finger at General Ourumov who then walks in, acts suspicious, tried & fails to argue, then kills the minister and tries to kill Bond & Simonova but they manage to escape. Simonova soon gets caught again, but Bond makes his way out in a tank. The scene where bond bursts through the wall in a tank, hot on the tail of Ourumov & Simonova, is quite epic. In fairness, any actor could have pulled off Bond’s role in that scene – all credit to the writers and cinematography there for making one of the most outstanding & memorable scenes in the history of the James Bond movie saga. The following scenes of Bond in his tank brushing past buildings and knocking chunks out are quite wild too.

Shortly after 90 minutes in, we’re introduced to CIA operative Jack Wade, played quite well & charismatically by Joe Don Baker. He helps Bond & Simonova with their insertion into Cuba via the United States, and he has a bit of a jolly, low-IQ, all-sorted demeanour. This appears to be another attempt to replicate the outstanding humour of Sheriff JW Pepper from the Roger Moore era, and it falls short, but it’s not a bad effort either.

In the final half hour we see a satellite dish hidden under water, which gets raised out of the water when needed to control the GoldenEye. This is reminiscent of the space rocket base hidden within the seemingly water-filled volcano in You Only Live Twice (1967) – a Sean Connery classic from 3 decades prior.