X2: X-Men United is one of those movies that Hollywood calls "review-proof." And they're right, because there's nothing me or any other dopey hack in the world could say to make people think, "You know, maybe I won't bother." X2 is the sequel to a huge summer blockbuster, with a giant cast and a trailer that makes it look like one of the best action flicks to come down the pike in a long time.

For once, the trailers don't lie. X2 is really good – better than the first, actually, and maybe even in the same company as Spider-Man (both are based on comic books, hence the comparison). The action sequences are some of the finest I've seen, and you couldn't ask for much more from a story that features and gives adequate screen time to this many unique characters. Bryan Singer, who, like Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, cut his teeth on small indie films, brings a refreshing change to the arid landscape with the rare summer sequel that not only doesn't just rehash the same situations as the original, but flat-out breaks ground in sheer entertainment value (sadly, nobody will be talking about X2 in two weeks, when the Matrix sequel hits theatres).

X2 takes off like a rocket and doesn't think of letting up for a second – save the obligatory "romantic tension" scenes – until the final credits start to roll. It's set not long after the first film, with the Mutant Registration Act still being bandied about Washington. Its creator, Senator Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison), is now dead-set against the act, passing of which seems imminent after X2's opening scene in which a mutant named Nightcrawler infiltrates the White House and comes within an inch or two of killing the President. In case you're completely unfamiliar with the whole mutant thing, a small percentage of the world's population has special powers obtained through various forms of mutation. It's a thinly veiled attempt to show the plight of the outcast minority of your choice (black, gay, Japanese, or, more timely, Arabs).

The first X-Men film concentrated on a battle between two different groups of mutants. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), or the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the equation, runs a school for gifted children in Westchester County in hopes of helping mutants eventually integrate themselves into society, while The Brotherhood of Evil, led by the Malcolm X-ish Erik Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen), wants to physically punish the humans who refuse to accept his kind. As the title suggests, in X2, the mutants unite to battle a common enemy (Brian Cox).

One of the things that made the first X-Men picture so entertaining was the decision to not show the origin of each character. In fact, aside from a brief opening depicting a young Lehnsherr becoming Magneto, we don't really learn the genesis of any of the other dozen or so mutants. Part of X2's story revolves around Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) trying to regain enough of his memory to learn his own origin, but that's about it. While each character from the first flick is back (except Toad and Sabretooth, of course), we see more of minor players Pyro, Iceman, Jubilee, Colossus and Shadowcat, in addition to a whole lot of Deathstrike (Kelly Hu) and Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming). The latter's scenes alone are worth the price of admission. Bamf!

2:12 –

for sci-fi action/violence, some sexuality and brief language