xXx (2002)

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Overall rating: 2/5
Director: Rob Cohen
Starring: Vin Diesel, Asia Argento, Marton Csokas, Samuel L. Jackson

Tagline: Triple the explosions, triple the stunts, half the plot.

Film: XXX stars human beef-slab Vin Diesel as a man who plays by his own rules. Does that sound clichéd? Good. You’re ready for the rest of the movie then.

XXX isn’t very subtle about its aims. It bills itself as introducing “a new breed of special agent,” and a very Bond-esque operative gets murdered at hard-core, industrial/goth rave in Prague during the first few minutes of the film. The message? Don’t wear a tuxedo to a rave. You need scum to catch scum.

We then cut to Vin Diesel, the titular XXX or Xander Cage, an extreme sports athlete who steals a car from a California state senator and drives it off a dam during one of the many spectacular stunt scenes that mar an otherwise perfectly crappy movie. NSA guru Samuel L. Jackson taps Cage to infiltrate the Czech rave scene and stop a vicious gang of anarchists from unleashing Armageddon in the form of a deadly biological weapon.

One of the subtle, unintentional ironies of the film is that it spends the first ten minutes setting XXX up to be the “anti-Bond” and then spends the next hour and a half Xeroxing the Bond formula — albeit with less charm and more tattoos. There’s a dangerous woman, a megalomaniacal villain and car chases and explosions galore.

The film is set in Prague and it appeared to be mainly shot on location. To give the filmmakers their due, the city looks gorgeous and the lens really captures the colors and textures of Eastern Europe.

On the minus side Diesel delivers his lines with all the conviction of a robot reading a teleprompter, the plot has holes that you could drive XXX’s souped-up classic GTO through and the filmmakers appear to only have a passing knowledge of the laws of physics.

This is Diesel’s second successful outing with director Rob Cohen, The blockbuster The Fast and the Furious was the first. We need to stop giving them money right now. It’s the only way they’ll ever learn.

Rating: 2/5

DVD: Widescreen anamorphic format, Director’s Commentary, A Filmmaker’s Diary Documentary, “Diesel Powered” Featurette, “Building Speed: The Vehicles of XXX” Featurette, “The GTO is Back” Featurette, Deleted Scenes with Optional Director’s Commentary, Designing The World of XXX Featurette, Storyboard Comparisons, Multi-Angle Deconstructions, Visual Effects “How To’s”, Music Video: Gavin Rossdale “Adrenaline”, DVD-ROM: Screenplay, Agent Shavers’ GTO Manuel & Weblinks

XXX sounds and looks amazing. The movie is almost worth owning for sound-effects and action sequences alone. If only they had a plot to string those elements together, they would have had a winner.

My favorite feature is “The GTO Is Back,” which is just a long commercial for Pontiac’s new GTO which will be unveiled later this year. The car doesn’t appear in the movie. No one from the movie is interviewed. Instead we get Pontiac marketing team members drawing parallels between driving a Pontiac and the excitement you get from watching XXX. I’m not sure which party was slighted here.

Rating: 3/5

Five Degrees of Separation

Bullitt – Steve McQueen knows about muscle cars and getting the bad guys.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Another movie shot in Prague. I think that’s where the similarity ends.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – George Lazenby: the original anti-Bond.
The People vs. Larry Flynt – Larry knows something about being “XXX.”
Patriot Games – Samuel L. Jackson with a smaller role in a better spy movie.