XXX
Rental
All guts and no glory. No one expected this movie to be a surprise Oscar hit of the summer, we just kind of hoped it would impress us with the stunts and not insult us with the dialogue. By and large, XXX succeeds in that plan. The actors just insult each other. Vin Diesel plays a crazy semi-criminal vigilante and extreme sports fanatic named Xander Cage (hence the first X) who is X-tremely X-hibitionist in his suicidal joy rides. Anyway, our government, or some shadowy spy version of our government, personified by Augustus Gibbons (limned by Samuel L. "I learned to dial in performances from George Lucas" Jackson), recruits loose cannon X. Why? Because he's expendable, blends in to a party crowd, and can spot a fake waitress at 100 yards. He's street smart, but not so much concerned with safety. These are the executives of tomorrow, running future board meetings: "No seatbelts, dude, fight the oppression!" "Yes sir, Mr. Cage." "Dude, call me X or I'll rip your face off!" "Ha ha ha!"
Anyway, we don't see these movies for intricate plot. It's definitely not James Bond, because Bond and Archvillain #75 sip martinis and snipe verbally at each other before slipping poison needles into their pajamas. Xander spends the first 3rd of the movie unconscious and then proceeds to blow stuff up and while it's blowing up, surf/motocross/climb/jump over/through it. Yee haw! "That was lucky!" But gone are the civilized super criminals (even Dr. Evil still retains some class in his comportment), now comes sociopathic party animals only interested in random killings, all the drugs they can eat, and, uh, chaos? Get Smart's K.A.O.S. was more organized, and sadly, more believable. But then again, that was when being Smart was good. This "hero" teaches us that disregard for authority, hollering and hitting your friends is a good way to succeed. Anarchy sounds like a barely differentiated alternative.
Xander's 99 in this case is a surly eastern bloc raver chick with a surprisingly expensive assortment of fishnet tights and miniskirts (considering the snow). Everyone wears appallingly silly coats that Shaft would have thrown to the ground and torched, and naturally everyone is extremely arrogant, pouty, pushy, obnoxious, and unfettered with common sense or decency. We are supposed to like XXX because he is not only like, totally extreme, dude, but he also can use big words correctly, ergo he is smart. In other words, the screenwriter knows what the words mean, so he plugs them into a sentence correctly, but the target audience won't know much beyond the "Obey Your Thirst" message so it just like, totally sounds way smart, yo. Dude, he sounds rad.
Xander doesn't live his life one quarter mile at a time, but more like one death-defying stunt per objective, depending completely on the kindness of fate to offer up not one, not two, but over 5 deus ex machinas to save his demographically wide-appealing butt. What my companion wisely noted, with Physics 101 under his belt, was that "the reality of the situation distracted from the luckiness of the situation." Yeah, it's fun to watch these stunts, but knowing apparently more about gravity than X does is a detriment to the pure enjoyment we expected. Dang but they scored themselves some beautiful locations. So if you're considering killing yourself in Prague by getting yanked out of one moving vehicle by another moving vehicle, strap on your back brace and start packing! It beats like, school.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. reviews@cinerina.com Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com and http://www.capitol-city.com
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