A baddie named Stryker (Brian Cox) wants to make war between the humans and the mutants, and since he knows a way to bring mutants under his control, he even has one, Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) make an assassination attempt on the president (Cotter Smith). At the same time, Stryker is also a prominent figure in Washington and as such has access to Magneto (Ian McKellan), an evil mutant who is kept in a high security prison, and since he has his ways to make Magneto talk, he makes him tell everything about the X-Men and their hideout in Professor Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) private school for mutants, and especially about Xavier's Cerebro-thingie, a device that can track down every mutant on earth ...

Soon enough, Stryker has gotten hold of Xavier and the mutant Cyclops (James Marsden), and he makes Xavier tell him everything about Cerebro, and he has Xavier's school raided and most of the mutants (mostly children) incarcerated ... but all is not lost: Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Storm (Halle Berry) were not around during the raid but have in the meantime tracked down Nightcrawler and make him tell them everything (as in everything he knows) about Stryker's operation) while Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has saved a handful of teenage mutants - Rogue (Anna Paquin), her new boyfriend Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford) - from capture, and Magneto has managed to escape and suggests an alliance with the X-Men in face of their common enemy.

It all ends in a giant battle in Stryker's secret headquarters, hidden inside a dam, during which Xavier and the children are saved of course, Stryker and his gang - including Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), the martial arts-fighting female version of Wolverine - get their just desserts, and of course the dam breaks. Only Jean Grey has to die in order to help the others escape - but of course she will be back in time for part 3 ...

And the other negative thing, Magneto managed to escape the grips of the X-Men with his bodyguard, the shapeshifter Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) and the juvenile hothead Pyro, who might or might not turn evil ...

In the end, Xavier manages to catch the president just before he is supposed to make a speech to declare war on the mutants, and hand him documents that prove that it was really Stryker who was behind the mutant attacks ...

What goes for the first X-Men also applies for part 2: The plot is simplistic but over-convoluted, any attempts at interesting storytelling (like a subplot about Wolverine's origins and his former connection to Stryker) are smothered by a plethora of unnecessary special effects and way too many characters who actually add little to nothing to the actual plot of the filmmost of the lead characters are played by undertalented pretty-face actors and actresses, and Anna Paquin, easily the most talented actress in the whole film, is wasted in a cheesy teen romance subplot and is given way too little to do. And then the movie is so awfully long, over two hours actually, which is way too much for a simplistic plot like this.

Rather a waste of time.

review � by Mike Haberfelner

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In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

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special appearances by
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directed by
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written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

now streaming at

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Robots and rats,
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ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
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Tales to Chill
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the new anthology by
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