New 'X-Men': A 'First Class' action movie

The potential for world annihilation and the fate of the human race are at the mercy of one of pop culture's most immutable forces: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. We should have known.

Apparently, the Cuban Missile Crisis was all Bacon's doing — or at least that of his villainous alter ego, Sebastian Shaw, in X-Men: First Class. Actually, if Bacon's Shaw had his way, he'd have started World War III.

Lest this sound ridiculous, this fifth X-Men, a prequel set mostly in the 1960s, is a classy re-boot. For a film that's predominantly a set-up to the ongoing saga, it never stints on dramatic tension.

Director Matthew Vaughn knows how to pack an action movie with a stylish punch, as evidenced in last year's Kick-Ass. Here he revives the flagging franchise with this globe-trotting iteration, infusing it with new life and dazzling visual effects. Audiences get a full sense of the compelling back stories of elder X statesmen, Magneto and Professor X, who have more intrinsically intriguing stories than the hirsute hero in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

VIDEO: Preview 'X-Men: First Class'

The story, by former X-Men director Bryan Singer, links evil mutants — Bacon's Shaw and January Jones as Emma Frost, his telepathic partner who morphs into a body made of diamonds — to actual history. The story imaginatively alleges that Shaw and his ilk were puppet masters pulling the strings behind U.S.-Soviet conflicts.

The cast is top-notch, particularly James McAvoy as the calmly intelligent Charles Xavier/Professor X and Michael Fassbender as the intensely ruthless Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto. We get a sense of what motivated them and see their early friendship unfold.

In style and spirt, this X-Men installment has more in common with James Bond movies than superhero capers. Even the music sounds Bond-esque, and Fassbender would make a great Bond when Daniel Craig tires of the gig.

Besides the nimble performances of McAvoy, Fassbender and über-baddie Bacon, the story is powered by the high-spirited performances of the young cast, particularly Nicholas Hoult as Hank/The Beast and Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique.

Scenes of their training in the early days of the Xavier Institute, under the tutelage of Magneto and Xavier — and augmented by split-screen effects — are immensely fun.

However, in a few sequences the youthful mutants seem transplanted from 2011 in their attitudes and phraseology. That and an overlong, sometimes repetitive climactic naval clash between the U.S., Soviets and evil mutants are the movie's only stumbling points. This X- Men is indeed first class: an exciting, bold and thoroughly enjoyable summer blockbuster.