Tasked
with creating a youth oriented James Bond movie, with more explosions and
gunplay than the entire 007 series combined, Rob Cohen uses Vin Diesel to sculpt
the new-age action hero. How will teens relate to this hulk of a human, aside
for his young age? Easy. Ink his arms up with colorful tattoos, give him a
destructive/anti-authoritative attitude, and above all, show him plunging down a
bridge in one of the coolest daredevil stunts since Johnny Knoxville premiered
his Jackass crew on MTV. Combine these elements and you’ll get Xander
Cage. An advocate of videogames and extreme sports, Xander is the ultimate in
fearless acrobats. He’s also the hero of the latest Cohen/Diesel collaboration, XXX;
one
of the biggest, rowdiest, bullet-frenzied action movie ever made.
For
all its car-swerving chase sequences, XXX loses heavy momentum midway
through once our hero becomes… well, a hero. Xander transforms into a typical, suave ladies man who develops
a backstabbing conscience and embraces the system he originally stood against.
From the time we’re introduced to our hero, an Internet celebrity who films
dangerous stunts for his website, to the final scene, where
he’s reclining on a beach-chair tanning in some exotic island, the antihero is
defeated by second-rate James Bond zingers. In trying to impress Generation
Playstation, Cohen forgot an important rule to their value system, which is to
"keep it real". But since the movie at hand is a giant flame of
eye-scorching fun, with a plot not nearly as interesting as its stunts, who
cares about characterization.
The
Bond similarities are clear as nylon; even down to a brash Q-like inventor who, when demonstrating one of his many explosive gadgets, warns
everyone to stand back while he detonates the bomb standing
inches away. And he does it all with a wide, joyous smile. Then there’s the agent in command,
played by Samuel L. Jackson, who by
the end is reduced to the nagging boss commanding his agent to return to work while
said agent is on vacation. Apparently after you’ve saved the world,
taking a break isn’t an option.
With
his toned physique and deep voice, Diesel has little trouble fitting in as an
action star. Playing Xander isn’t such a stretch, though, since he’s very
similar to the convict turned hero Diesel played in the sci-fi monster flick, Pitch
Black. In XXX, Diesel is blackmailed into becoming a secret agent as part of the government’s
latest tactic, which is to use known criminals and
badasses as temporary agents that can infiltrate villains’ lairs due to their
familiarity with scummy evildoers. This operation is sanctioned seconds
after it is proposed by Gibbons (Jackson), an agent who got half his face burnt
“sticking foot to ass for this country”. And so the training begins.
As
part of the exercises supposed to determine which thug would be useful, Xander
is put under intense training, even forced to survive inside a Columbian drug
chain under heavy attack by the country’s army. The action in these scenes is
enough to exhilarate chronic fans of True Lies, as motorcycles hover
over flames as though they had propellers, and that’s only 30-minutes into the
flick. Compared
to the stunts performed throughout XXX (pronounced Triple X), the
most ridiculous Arnold Schwazenegger movie seems realistic.
Of
course there has to be a Bond Girl, er, leading lady. And here she is played by Italian
beauty Asia Argento (daughter of horror director, Dario Argento). Argento's Helena
is a baddie working for Yorgi (Marton Csokas), the demented leader
of a Czech movement known as Anarchy ’99. Her character has the same
problem as Diesel’s; she starts off as a wild pyschotic and then, out of nowhere,
turns soft.
Although when your leader has plans to launch poisonous gasses on a city,
killing thousands, most people would retire their ruff n’ tuff ways.
GRADE:
C
-Copyright 2002 by Shaun Sages