SUPERMAN, Batman and Spiderman may be the most familiar superheroes to have thrilled comic reader over the years but others from across the Atlantic are about to make a major impact - this time on the big screen.

They are the X-Men, a team of action heroes based on the characters created in Marvel Comics, who each has a genetic mutation which they control for the benefit of mankind.

In this $75m action blockbuster they try and save the world from embittered mutant Magneto (Ian McKellen), a Nazi concentration camp survivor who fears a new age of persecution is on the horizon.

He plans to declare war on the humans, aided by the shape-shifting Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), the fearsome Sabretooth (Tyler Mane), and the slippery Toad (Ray Park).

Mankind's only hope rests with wheelchair-bound telepath Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his band of champions: Cyclops (James Marsden), Storm (Halle Berry), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Dr Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and energy vampire Rogue (Anna Paquin).

Shoe-horning so many characters and so much back story into a little over 100 minutes, director Bryan Singer is forced to relegate many key players to bit-parts.

Wolverine and Rogue are afforded the lion's share of screen time, and both Jackman and Paquin deliver solid performances.

Fans of the comic books will spot plenty of in-jokes and clever touches in David Hayter's screenplay, and the action sequences are choreographed and edited to make the duels between good and evil as spectacular as possible.

Singer's film guarantees plenty of larger-than-life action and plenty of style.

You'll come out of the cinema hungry for more - and X-Men 2 lurks on the horizon.