xXx (2002)

Starring Vin Diesel, Asia Argento, Marton Csokas, Samuel L. Jackson.
Directed by Rob Cohen.
Written by Rick Wilkes.
Distributed by Columbia Pictures.
124 minutes.

LVJeff's Rating: 5/10

XXX = 007

The marketing for XXX seemed really funny to me. It couldn't have been more blatant in its purpose -- to sell Vin Diesel as the new action star. After attributing the success of The Fast and the Furious to him, the movie's marketers wasted no time in selling XXX as an action extravaganza worthy of Schwarzenegger in the '80's. Heck, some members of the press even labeled Diesel as the new Schwarzenegger. What, so soon? Let him chase Linda Hamilton around, rescue Alyssa Milano, or fight some dreadlocked aliens first, then call him the heir to Arnold.

Although the ad campaign for XXX certainly felt obvious, the movie takes the baton and runs with it even more aggressively. I've never seen a film try so hard to be accepted by the youth of its day. The audience knows that they're watching a movie about a secret agent who is supposed to be the ghetto alternate to James Bond's sophistication. But just in case we didn't catch where he's coming from, the movie takes pains to hold up the message in big shiny letters. Diesel's first act as Xander Cage, underground X-treme sports hero, is to steal a Corvette from an out-of-touch senator. Xander, speaking to a camera rigged in the front seat, says something to the effect of, "Senator, you wanted to ban rock music because it promotes violence. It's just music! You wanted to ban video games because they waste our time. Well, sometimes it's the only education we got!" He might as well have had, "YOUTH, LOVE ME!" stamped on his forehead.

XXX continues this silliness by having Xander greet his friends, who come up and say, "Whassup, dawg!" in such an unnatural way that it comes out as, "What's up, dog?" He is eventually recruited for secret agent work by Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson, whose natural badassness sticks out in this sea of laboured badassness), a man surrounded by stuffy cronies who utter dorky lines clearly meant to be set-ups for a witty response by Xander. By the time the hero is about to be sucked out of an airplane yelling, "I live for this s--t!", I was thinking to myself, "OK, we get it. You're badass."

But XXX isn't truly disappointing until after Xander begins his mission, for it is at this point when the movie, trying so hard to be different from a James Bond flick, ends up becoming a James Bond flick. XXX includes some obvious digs at its predecessor, most notably an opening sequence in which an agent in a tux is killed because he can't blend in to a crowd of European punks, and a later scene in which a car loaded with rockets, gadgets, and doodads is disparaged for having nothing useful on it. But in the scenes where the movie takes itself seriously, it is literally being a James Bond film.

How many elements of 007 does it incorporate? Let me count the ways (and if you don't want to see a list of spoilers for the whole movie, please skip this paragraph). The sexy female lead starts on the enemy's side, but later falls for the hero. The locale is European. The bad guys are Russian and have thick Russian accents. There is a weapons specialist a la "Q." The hero is equipped with gadgets that come in very useful. There are many chases with guys on motorcycles or snowmobiles. The bad guy runs a relatively non-threatening group that covers a maniacal scheme to decimate populations. The bad guy explains parts of his plans out loud for the benefit of the audience. The bad guy orders the hero killed, but when the hero is captured he is brought to him alive. The bad guy speechifies to the hero. The bad guy lives in a fortress, which is assaulted by a large national army. The hero chases down the death object and foils it. The epilogue shows the hero and leading lady alone, only to be interrupted by headquarters, which is then summarily ignored as the couple swims away. The title sequence is done with fancy graphics (but, for some reason or other, is played after the film ends).

The only 007 element lacking in XXX is a strong evil henchman. Guess it just couldn't include everything.

You can't give your movie the tagline "A new breed of secret agent" when the movie has nothing new. No, making the hero faux-ghetto and having his adversaries be punks will not cut it. That tagline requires the movie to contain originality, which was about as plentiful in XXX as nutrition is in candy.

That said, I have to put in a good word for the movie's stuntwork. Even though the action sequences do not belong in anyone's realm of believability, they contained enough excitement to please me. And Vin Diesel, who is clearly awkward as a typical action hero, pronouncing his lines with conspicuous self-consciousness, nevertheless emerges as a charismatic bundle of energy on the big screen. He looks like he's having fun, and that comes through in his performance, even though the smoothness of his one-liners does not.

XXX had the potential to forge new territory, but it chose not to. Too bad. While trying to outdate James Bond, this movie just proves that nobody does it better than 007.

©Jeffrey Chen, Aug. 13, 2002

An edited version of this review appears at ReelTalk Movie Reviews.

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