Cinema: Where's The Wow Factor?

Dour and draggy, this live-action film of the Marvel comics superheroes series is less than marvelous

Action movies need a jazzy opening scene; it gets a moviegoer's pulse racing with anxiety. So 007 went airborne off a ski slope. Lethal Weapon's Danny Glover sat on a bomb-rigged toilet seat. But until now, no one had set a teaser scene in a Nazi death camp, where gaunt Jews trudge to their doom. A boy, torn from his parents, goes into a seizure, and the camp gates are bent open. Aha! So the inmates are miraculously freed? No. It's not about the 6 million. It's about this one kid--an X-kid.

The first scene of the X-Men movie, which...

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