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XXX is a stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Once that fact is out of the way, the movie itself turns out to be pretty damn cool and a lot of fun. For years, Hollywood has been telling us to prepare ourselves for the next great action hero. For years, they have been wrong. (Whatever happened to Billy Zane's Phantom franchise, anyway?) This time, they might be on to something. Vin Diesel stars as Xander Cage, also known as XXX. He doesn't like you. If you met him in a street, he'd probably punch you and say something witty like "I just punched you." He's totally awesome. Xander lives life to the extreme--driving cars off of bridges, sleeping with bootylicious freaks on the first date, dialing zero to make a collect call, that sort of thing. He's a bad ass. He has many tattoos on his body with allude to this, including, I'm pretty sure, one on his inner thigh which reads "I'm a Bad Ass." He's recruited by Samuel L. Jackson to become a secret agent and save the world. You get the feeling he's going to be doing this a lot. This time, the world needs saving from some unshaven Eastern Europeans. We know they're bad because they drink, party and dance the night away. And they smoke. Only bad guys smoke. Xander, of course, does all of this as well, except smoke. Remember, only bad guys smoke. Then there's something about a killer robotic submarine and your basic series of biological weapons that seem to always go missing from the breakup of the Soviet Union in every movie made in the last five years. There's also a damaged, angry Eurotrash chick who pouts in Xander's general direction from time to time. Whatever, the details are sketchy and unimportant. And then there are the stunts. You've got your motocross, your snowboarding, your skateboarding, your parachuting, your parasailing, even your basic speeding down the road really, really fast. But this isn't just some X-Games training video--it's Hollywood. So the motocross is wrapped around a huge shoot-out at a burning Colombian drug retreat. The snowboarding is done while escaping an avalanche. The parasailing is done while attached to a speeding doomsday rocket machine. And the sleeping with the near-naked lust buckets is done in the name of saving the world. And everything is done with a wink and smile. If this movie didn't star Vin Diesel, it would be a really bad movie. He shines. Not as in "Look at me, I'm the world's most masterful thespian," but rather as in "Look at me, I'm hunky and witty." He's quite hunky. And he's quite witty. It's a perfect fit. OK, he does suffer from one-liner-itus. And OK, for a big macho stud, he looks awfully gay in that jacket with the fur ruffles. And yes, for a Secret Agent Who Saves The World, he gets coincidentally rescued at the last minute a bit too often for my tastes. But it works, mate! If nothing else, this movie has set a new standard for being loud. It is so loud; we were literally warned by the ticket taker as we entered the theater. Its explosions are loud. Its soundtrack is loud. Its fashion is loud. It comes from the school of "Why blow up two cars, when fifteen cars will do?" This, my friends, is cinema of excess. Revel in it, immerse yourself in it, and wallow in it. For tomorrow we may die. XXX gets 3 3/5 Babylons. Party on, Xander! Right now, the only thing the producers have to worry about is how to differentiate XXX2 from the upcoming X2 (X-Men sequel). You know, at the rate we're going, how long before a film comes out with a title that is nothing more than a grunt? I heard that in the spirit of "The Loin King" and "Jurassic Pork", they're making a teen porno called "PG-13". XXX |
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