xXx | Review

Pedal to the heavy Metal with Cohen’s loud and annoying action flick.

Obviously not all films are made to compete for the Best Picture category at the Oscars- Rob Cohen’s newest flick is all about racking in the money and not the awards. XXX is about big bangs, big crashes, big explosions and bigger than life everything. So what does this film have going for it? Probably the paying audience willing to watch the crap-the teenage boy demographic is big on action flicks with plenty of non-sense. The second thing that this film has going for it is the guy with the muscles and the machines in the form of Vin Diesel (Boiler Room) and a GTO giving the new boy the title of the biggest action-flick hero since Arnie and Sly were competing for the title. With the addition of the James Bond film element -fast screeching cars, plenty of explosions and cool gadgets but without the good-looking women -we have all the makings of another franchise (actually they have already started with the second script).

A renegade extreme sports dude know as X- Diesel (see if you can find the “xxx” tattoo) is a man who risks his life to protect artists in the music industry and legions of video game players from the government censorship, – just the type of candidate that the Samuel L. Jackson (Formula 51) needs for his dangerous mission. So rather than have him fill out an application form Mr.X is sent to the ‘be an agent training camp’ starting off in a diner and then completing the process in the peaceful land of Columbia. Now he can dash around in the air, land, water and snow….and carry a gun. Rather than earn a trip to the penitentiary our main man goes on undercover. His attitude is equalled by the enemy-a Russian who really has no need to be the evil person that he actually is- why the heck would you want to destroy the world (including the politically correct choice of Washington over New York?) especially when you have everything you have ever wanted- clubs, cars, chicks and cash. A billion car explosions and thousands of deaths later we have the finale with more of the same recycled stuff coming from H-wood, the bad guy tries to escape, has his entire army of henchmen wiped out by one smart fox who is willing to do it all and at the same time save the world from the most horrible super-weapon known to man-kind.

I would have most likely enjoyed this picture by only a couple of centimetres more if the protagonist was not the bad-ass skateboard punk ruling the waves of the internet but rather a big shot criminal who has experience with taking a safety clip off. I also would have liked to have seen Asia Argento (Compagna di viaggio) make her first American production appearance in any other film- e.g. the Monica Belluci route. There are some nice location shots with the beautiful city of Prague of the Czech Republic as a backdrop, plenty of out-of control stunt work and the ultimate casting choice of Diesel makes XXX easy convincing for testosterone movie-goers-but the film as a whole is only entertaining for a couple of scenes. With a mix of horrible one-liners and a story-line that shreds itself up into small tiny pieces of repetitive crap-this picture does a good job at reminding us that something else might be an awfully better choice-as in the next Bond film which is coming out in the 4th quarter corner. I’ll bet that Bond leaves more of an X-mark than the film that descibes a whole other industry of filmmaking.

Rating 1.5 stars