(12A, 104mins) Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman,Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Vinnie Jones, Directed by Brett Ratner.

X marks the spot where director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) reduces the X-Men to a soulless, brainless clatter.

The third and final film in the series turns the epic battle between good and evil into a barrage of computer-generated special effects and slow-motion trickery.

While the first X-Men film and its sequel, elegantly directed by Bryan Singer, compelled us to care about the mutants in their struggle against mankind's ignorance and prejudice, X-Men:

The Last Stand has no interest in emotion or character development.

This is a big budget spectacle with no heart. A number of X-Men shuffle off their mutant coils in this third film, others are badly wounded in action, and not once do we shed a tear or care in the slightest for their welfare.

But leave the cinema early, either in boredom or disappointment, and you'll miss a post-credits scene, which intimates that this might not be the last of the X-Men films after all.

Hugh Jackman, in his guise as the hirsute and brooding Wolverine, looks decidedly mangy and is forced to share the limelight with Halle Berry's redundant wind-breaker, Storm. Perhaps she is responsible for the dark rain cloud that hangs over the film?

Some of the digital effects jar with the live action elements and Simon Kinsberg and Zak Penn's screenplay displays a distinct lack of intelligence.

Style vanquishes substance from the opening flashbacks, introducing the young Jean Grey and young Warren Worthington aka Angel who tries in vain to hide his rapidly-emerging wings from his father.

We jump forward ten years to the not-too-distant future. Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart) and his students continue to mourn Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who died protecting the other X-Men at Alkali Lake.

Wolverine roams aimlessly about Xavier's mansion, while Grey's heartbroken lover, Cyclops (Marsden) heads for the hills to contend with his grief. The gloom lifts momentarily with news that the US government has engineered a cure for mutancy. With one simple injection, the outcasts can relinquish their special powers and live among the general populace.

Magneto (McKellen) and his trouble-seeking brethren, including Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Callisto (Dania Ramirez) and Juggernaut (Jones), respond by declaring war on the humans.

Xavier mounts a defence, aided by Wolverine, Storm, Rogue (Anna Paquin), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Shadowcat (Ellen Page).

The good guys must surely triumph except Magneto has a secret weapon: Jean Grey's vengeful alter ego, Dark Phoenix. X-Men: The Last Stand should be the most involving film of the trilogy: Romances are threatened, characters wrestle with grief, people perish on both sides of the conflict. Unfortunately, we're left unmoved.

Occasionally the script hits the right tone, like the banter between Wolverine and Dr Hank McCoy (Grammer) aka Beast.

"I hear you're quite an animal," quips McCoy; "Look who's talking!" smirks his razor-clawed rival.

RIP The X-Men.