X-Men 2<br></br>Heartlands<br></br>The Heart of Me<br></br>Pure<br></br>Shiri<br></br>Half Past Dead<br></br>Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Is it the follow-up, the prequel, or the prologue to the sequel?

While Spiderman swings around a primary-coloured, CGI city, and Batman and Daredevil skulk in their Gothic theme parks, X-Men 2 (12A) is set somewhere closer to the real world. The special effects and design are far less fake than in the latest Star Wars movies, say, and the director, Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects), continues to delve into the franchise's socio-political themes.

Yes, the characters are super-powered mutants, but this makes them a feared minority in more danger from lynch mobs and hostile legislation than from mad geniuses with death rays. Should they try to get along with homo sapiens, as Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and his team advocate? Or should humans and mutants battle it out, an option backed by arch-villain Magneto (Ian McKellen)? X-Men 2 – or X2, to use its snappier alternative title – is as serious as a film featuring a blue-skinned man with a prehensile tail can be.

Still, the fact remains that it is a superhero blockbuster, and at some point the allegories have to give way to people in bodysuits punching each other in mid-air. That's where X2 founders. The opening sequence is a blast, as Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler teleports around the White House. But from then on there's only a trailer's worth of stunts, and every skirmish is over in the first round.

Singer just isn't confident on action scenes. Having spent the first film introducing the characters and their backgrounds, he spends the sequel introducing yet more characters and yet more backgrounds, and screen-time is already spread too thinly between Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Storm (Halle Berry), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and the rest. When are the X-Men going to get around to a good long scrap with some supervillains? Ian McKellen has opined that the first movie was just a prologue to X2. But X2 feels a lot like a prologue to X3.

If you've ever wondered how you make a road movie that covers no more than a hundred miles of road, Heartlands (12A) has the answer: you travel very slowly. Colin (Michael Sheen) minds a corner-shop in an unnamed Midlands town and has never thought of doing anything else. But when his wife (Jane Robbins) runs away to Blackpool with the captain of the pub darts team (Jim Carter), Colin sets off in lukewarm pursuit on his scooter.

That's all there is to it. Heartlands putters along so slowly and gently that it might play better on TV. On the other hand, the big screen is graced with some ravishing imagery – a magical shot of a campsite seen from above, for instance. Directed by Daniel O'Donnell (East is East) and written by Paul Fraser (A Room for Romeo Brass), the film belongs to the location scouts and the director of photography, Alwin Kuchler.

The Heart of Me (15) couldn't be more of an archetypal English period movie if it had Helena Bonham Carter in it – and it does have Helena Bonham Carter in it. It's 1934, and HBC is a frizzy-haired Bohemian who tempts a respectable businessman (Paul Bettany) away from his tubular wife (Olivia Williams) – her own sister. Adapted from The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann, The Heart of Me echoes some other recent starched love triangles, particularly The Age of Innocence and The End of the Affair. If never intense enough to match them, it has three captivating performances at its centre.

Pure (18) is so condescending and programmatic in its depiction of a 10-year-old boy with a heroin-addicted mum that it could be a government anti-drugs film made for schools. It's unbearable, not least because of all the mockney actors saying that they fink they're off dann the caff for some pie'n'eels an' they ain't comin' off the gear even if the social services take away baby Beckham.

Shiri (18) is a Korean thriller – and the biggest box office hit in the country's history. It's about two secret agents who have to arrest a female assassin before a terrorist group can lay waste to Seoul. Its appeal is in combining a plot as far-fetched as that of any James Bond movie with violence that is visceral and bloody.

Competing with Shiri for the loudest gunfire of the week is Half Past Dead (15). The pudgy, putty-faced Steven Seagal is back in Under Siege mode, only this time he isn't socking bad guys in a ship or on a train, but inside a newly reopened Alcatraz. My tip to the prison service: don't leave heavy artillery and fuel canisters lying around.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (18) was made in 1986, but not released until 1990. Nowhere near as graphic or exploitative as some equivalent films of the time, it was controversial because both the anti-hero and the film itself present murder as if it's no big deal.

n.barber@independent.co.uk