xXx and xXx: State of the Union

*Just to let you guys know I’m using the spelling xXx as opposed to XXX because that’s how IMDB has it.  In the movies themselves the titles are animated giving little indication how it should really go.  I mean two of the x’s on the sides do seem to be smaller than the larger middle one.  Ah who gives a shit.

It’s pretty amazing that Vin Diesel is still a viable action star.  Who could’ve predicted that the Fast and Furious’ would remain popular in 2013?  Even his other franchise, the Riddick’s, are still going with another one due out soon.  Diesel should’ve been a relic of the early 2000’s but he’s defied the odds and survived.

And you know what, I don’t mind the guy.  He’s not the most charismatic individual but at the same time he does have a bit of a presence, he gets the job done and some of those Fast and Furious’ are pretty damn entertaining (Five is my fav).  It’s too bad that xXx is total schlock.

By all accounts this is a dumb fuckin’ picture.  Maybe the acting isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen and it’s shot, eh, ok I guess, but the script is atrocious.  None of the ideas work very well.  The Columbian raid scene, the avalanche scene, the poison gas water rocket scene are all ham handed and feel more like pieces that screenwriter Rich Wilkes (The Jerky Boys, Airheads) came up with first and then later had to write the rest of the screenplay around.  He didn’t even try with the dialogue so don’t expect anything remotely interesting there.  The characters are very simple too.  The villain wants to destroy the world, the love interest is an undercover agent and the gadget guru is some nerdy guy.

Our hero, Xander Cage (Diesel), isn’t any more complex.  He’s an extreme sports fanatic and uses those skills (motorcyclin’, car drivin’, snowboardin’, rock climbin’, skate boardin’, parasailin’, etc.) to take down the bad guys.  The filmmakers try to make you think that there’s more to him with an inner struggle angle.  Xander’s supposed to act like he doesn’t give a shit on the outside but deep down he really cares about the world.  The thing is he always ends up doing the right thing.  He never acts selfishly or in a manner that would suggest that he truly doesn’t care.

The general idea here seems to be an updated version of James Bond.  Instead of a suave and smooth spy we get an unsophisticated and brash one.  There’s even a line where Xander says “dude you gotta stop thinking Prague Police and start thinking Playstation, blow shit up!”  So just charge forward.  It’ll all work out (and of course everything does).  However, I would say that this isn’t different enough from your usual Bond picture.  Aside from Bond and Xander being kinda different the rest of the film isn’t.  I could totally see Bond outrunning an avalanche on a snowboard or parasailing his way onto a water rocket.  It’s really your standard 007 flick with a slightly different lead.

I really wanted to like this one.  I remember it being better the first time I saw it.  The whole thing is so meathead-y and incredibly predictable.  It gets boring pretty quick when you know what’s going to happen at every turn.  I can’t stress enough how dumb (that’s really the best word to use) the entire production feels.  I’m sure director Rob Cohen (Stealth, The Fast and the Furious) and his crew were all standing around saying to each other “we’re gonna blow shit up real good this time”.  But you can’t just blow shit up.  There has to be something behind it, a reason for the audience to care.  It’s all action set pieces just for the sake of having them.

And what the fuck is up with the title?  The main character’s name is Xander Cage.  That’s only one X if I counted right.  Where the hell do the other two come from?  The spy program isn’t called xXx, Xander’s code name doesn’t become xXx, he doesn’t prefer to be called xXx as a nickname and his series of sports videos aren’t called xXx (it’s the Xander Zone).  The only xXx that appears in this movie (expect in the title) is in the form of a tattoo on the back on Xaner’s neck but no one ever says one goddamn word about it.  It’s just there minding its own business waiting for someone to comment and no one does.  Obviously they went with xXx because it sounds risqué but it’s just another layer of stupid that this film piles on.

This thing did well though and so a sequel was made.  Diesel opted for The Pacifier instead attempting to broaden his appeal and his image.  I don’t think it worked considering three out his next five movies were Fast and Furious’.  And even then, out of the other two remaining only one was a totally different role for him with the lighthearted courtroom drama (at least that’s how the trailer makes it look) Find Me Guilty.

Anyway, moving on to xXx: State of the Union.  This time a new guy needs to stop the secretary of defense from taking out the president and starting World War…IV?  Hold on, when the hell did we fight and wrap up World War III?  I’m pretty sure I would’ve remembered that.  Not only does the movie make no mention of World War III but this is supposed to take place in modern day and not the future where you could pass off a comment like that.  I swear they mention this World War IV thing more than once too making an actual part of the plot and not just some weird line that Ice Cube improv’d during shooting.    

As I alluded to, Cube takes over the lead role as Darius Stone (they tell us Xander Cage is dead) and does about as well as could be expected.  He plays pissed off pretty well but that’s about all he can do (at least in more serious roles like this, Ghosts of Mars, Anaconda, Trespass (1992), etc.).  Cube is likeable though and does a serviceable job overall.

Samuel L. Jackson is back in his role as mentor and it was nice that they gave him more to do this time.  He actually becomes an important plot point and gets to do some ass kicking himself.

The strangest casting decision, however, goes to Willem Defoe who doesn’t do a particularly interesting job either.  What the fuck is he doing in this thing?  By this time he had already been in huge movies leading up to this one like Spider-Man, American Psycho and Finding Nemo.  I guess I never realized that he has Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Stone Cold) syndrome where even though he’s a legit star and a well-known actor that’s been in big name films, for some reason the man feels the need to say yes to every piece of shit that comes across his path.  Defoe has done at least two movies a year since the mid 90’s.  In 2005 alone he was in four pictures including this xXx sequel.  He’s a workaholic.

The action is ok at best.  It’s not as bad as most others were at the time but there are still problems with it.  Like the use of the stunt double is too obvious during the hand to hand fight scenes.  It just doesn’t look right the way they edited it together.  Inserting a close up of Cube’s face every so often doesn’t make it look like he’s actually fighting the bad guy.  I think they probably shot these scenes fine but totally fucked it up during editing.

There’s a lot of bad green screening and CGI too.  The bullet train sequence at the end looks especially terrible.   

And this time they explicitly tell us that a xXx is what the NSA calls their secret division of spies.  For example Darius Stone is a xXx and so is Xander Cage (sorry, was a xXx).  At least we got that cleared up. 

This is a real image from an actual scene
that takes place in State of the Union

Lee Tamahori (Along Came a Spider, Next, Die Another Day) directs and I’ve seen most of his pictures accidentally.  He’s not a very good director.  One thing I noticed is that he likes to put a bunch of CGI in his movies but the thing is he seems to have one of the worst feels for CGI out there.  He also doesn’t know how to make a story flow.  Most of the scenes in this start and end abruptly without transition.  I wanna say that Tamahori is the perfect candidate for a job like this because who fuckin’ cares about the xXx films?  But you never know what could be done with a series in the right hands.  Those Fast & Furious’ just got better and better (until Furious 6 which was extremely disappointing and (I hate to say this) kinda bad). 

And I don’t know if there were scenes that were cut out or just never written but I have to admit that the whole thing flew by quickly.  I was never very engrossed in what was happening or on any part of the production but for some reason before I knew it the film was over (running time is 100 mins).  It felt proper though.  I didn’t wish that there was more.

So if you compare this to its predecessor State of the Union is probably equal with it.  Neither one is very good.  The first feels more like a big budget picture and you could tell they were going for something (James Bond update).  The sequel has a lower budget feel but it also doesn’t come off quite as dumb as the original. 

State of the Union was totally a different script that was adapted into a xXx movie and maybe that’s why I might like that one only slightly better.  There isn’t any of the snowboardin’, motorcyclin’, etc. that was established in the first one and was very obviously intended to be a trademark of the series.  State of the Union is a bit more of a straight up action piece with several battles involving tanks, hand to hand fights and shoot outs.

Oh yea, Xzibit's in this too

xXx is more of a spy movie though.  There’s the globetrotting, the gadgets, the undercover work, a villain that wants to take over the world, etc.  State of the Union only takes place on the eastern seaboard, Stone doesn’t really go undercover (dressing up as a waiter for a minute so you can eavesdrop doesn’t count) and the villain wants to be president (ok and maybe start a world war).  There’re gadgets too but there were more in the first one.

There’s also one more important difference between the films.  Xander Cage was a civilian that was recruited to be a spy but Darius Stone is already a spy (or Navy Seal at least).  I thought the idea of xXx was to take non-military delinquents, adrenaline junkies and felons who could think outside the box, who were expendable and turn them into secret agents.  State of the Union goes against that by taking a well trained, already established perfect killing machine and turning him loose.  Just like the absence of the extreme sports stuff, this isn’t in the spirit of what the series was supposed to be.

Whatever, I wouldn’t recommend either one.

Side note: apparently another xXx movie is in the works (fuck, I’m gonna have to see that one too now).