STRIKING FILM TRAPPED BY MUTANT SCRIPT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

In ``X-Men,'' superpowered mutants are divided against each other over how to deal with the mere humans who fear and hate them. One group hopes that by using its gifts to aid and protect mankind, it will eventually gain the narrow-minded species' acceptance. The other group reckons itself the wave of the future, and it's either conquer the evolutionary throwbacks or be killed by them.

Mutants are not the only ones working at cross purposes in this big- screen adaptation of the popular Marvel comic book series. The film itself waffles uncomfortably between attempts to explore serious themes in the context of a jaunty superhero romp and, well, just being a mindless superhero romp. The film has other problems (as well as definite virtues), but the key trouble here is that the narrative's conflicting impulses keep canceling each other out. The disappointing result resembles the classic definition of interesting failure, writ mutationally large.

Director Bryan Singer, whose smaller, previous features include the exquisitely serpentine ``The Usual Suspects'' and the deft but underappreciated Stephen King adaptation ``Apt Pupil,'' may work in pop movie idioms, but he's a serious, even resonant, storyteller. He's always trying to get at deep truths - How does evil work? Is identity a fixed thing, or are we perpetually in the process of changing into someone else? How is power controlled? - and the X-Men mythos, more than most comics sagas, is a good theoretical stage for exploring them.

But whenever ``X-Men'' starts addressing such issues, an action sequence intrudes. And rather than dramatizing the story's themes, as in the best thoughtful sci-fi thrillers like ``Matrix'' and the ``Terminator'' films, the big stunts and effects bits have a half-hearted, derivative feel, like Singer felt obligated to include them.

That said, the X characters - or, at least, the ones we're with long enough to know here - mesh nicely with the filmmaker's concerns.

The leader of the good guys, Professor Xavier (``Star Trek's'' Patrick Stewart) can control others' minds. The short-fused, possibly immortal Wolverine (Australian newcomer Hugh Jackman), the series' signature hero, can't remember past a traumatic incident somewhere in his indefinite past. Troubled teen Rogue (``The Piano's'' Anna Paquin) absorbs the life force, memories and powers of anyone she touches. And bad girl Mystique (the model Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who is basically playing Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman swathed in midnight blue petroleum byproduct instead of stitched leather) can morph into a perfect facsimile of whomever she wishes.

Add to all this identity flexing an obvious allegory about prejudice, and you've got more than your typical, Spandex-clad adventuring (indeed, Singer has jettisoned the comic books' colorful costumes for a more subdued, though doubtless ``Matrix''-inspired, black leather wardrobe). But this is also where the movie immediately jumps the twin tracks of appropriateness and balance, from which it never quite readjusts to the rails.

Things commence at a concentration camp in 1944. As Nazi soldiers separate a young boy from his doomed parents, metal gates and barbed wire twist uncannily, if futilely. That child will grow up to become Magneto (Ian McKellen, having a good time), whose early trauma has convinced him that a human-run mutant Holocaust is just around the corner - and must be prevented by any means necessary.

Of course, connecting the historical horror so directly to escapist fantasy is in questionable taste at best. Storywise, it sets a tone of reaching too far beyond what the material's pulp metaphors can effectively grasp.

The contemporary bigotry resembles more than anything the current debate over gay rights. A demagogic senator (Bruce Davison) wants to register mutants - ``more dangerous than the guns you want to control,'' he lobbies a wavering colleague - before they harm or otherwise influence our precious children.

Little does the hysterical politician suspect what unimaginable fate Magneto has in store for him - not to mention a bunch of world leaders and, collaterally, the entire population of New York (the film's climactic battle between good and bad mutants takes place, rather too symbolically, at the Statue of Liberty).

While still-kinda-buddies Professor X and Magneto wait for their underlings to fight each other to the death, the main drama is over the souls of relative newbies Wolverine and Rogue. Not permitted much in the way of personalities, the other X-Men - Storm (Halle Berry), who controls weather; Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), a telekinetic psychic; and Cyclops (James Marsden), whose eyes emit death rays and, if they could, dirty looks at the animalistically attractive Wolverine, a rival for Jean's affections - try to convince the conflicted recruits that humans aren't all that bad.

A stronger argument against siding with Magneto's dark brotherhood, of course, is that it would mean having to hang out with oilslick girl and a guy whose tongue is 15 feet long (appropriately called Toad, he's played by Ray Park, who was Darth Maul in the last ``Star Wars'' movie).

Not that these evil mutants aren't fun in small doses. Many elements of ``X-Men'' are; all put together, however, they fail to add up to a satisfying movie.

The facts

--The film: ``X-Men'' (PG-13; sci-fi action violence).

--The stars: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Bruce Davison, Tyler Mane, Ray Park.

--Behind the scenes: Directed by Bryan Singer. Written by Singer, Tom DeSanto and David Hayter. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter. Released by 20th Century Fox.

--Running time: One hour, 35 minutes.

--Playing: Citywide.

--Our rating: Two and one half stars.

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Photo:

Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), left, Cyclops (James Marsden), Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Storm (Halle Berry) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) convene in Xavier's underground lab.