Product: xXx [VHS] (2002)
Rating: 1.0
The end of imagination
"XXX" and "Austin Powers" take their love for James Bond in opposite directions but end up in pretty much the same place. Unfortunately, only one of them is meant to be funny. It's hard to imagine a film so bad you could accurately describe it as a blot on Danny Trejo's resumé, but here it is. I've heard Vin Diesel liken this to "the climax scenes from every action movie ever made, all rolled into one." He's right. But writer Rich Wilkes and director Rob Cohen seem to have forgotten that a climax is only exciting as the payoff to something else: an engaging story. And this isn't one. It's just thoroughly, tediously, vintage James Bond - right down to the appalling accents, oversized Euro-thugs, M, Q, gorgeous good/bad girl, silly gadgets, laughable doomsday device, and the obligatory love scene denouement. Even Xander Cage, for all his apparent originality, is merely an unsubtle reworking of Bond himself: 007's amorality and sexual provocativeness might look tame by today's standards, but in the `60s they were no less challenging than Xander appears to us now. In fact Bond was edgier, because for all the script's posturing about Xander being an unreformed criminal of this highest order, the good sense of Columbia Tri-Star's marketing department ensures he isn't a bad guy at all. He's only `technically' a criminal: he's really just a mischievous muscle-guy with tatts and a webcast who happens to be anti-Establishment. Calling him XXX rather than giving him a Bond-like agent number may well be a nod to the X-Games, but it's also perfectly emblematic of the complete failure of imagination which informs this entire project. "We can't think of a number for him? Don't worry, we can't think of a story, either, and that isn't stopping us." Either this film is intended as some kind of postmodern Bond homage, or it's just a pitifully written, lazy grab for summer cash. I'll go with the latter, and the proof is in the viewing: despite the hype, it's boring. Only the thumpin' soundtrack keeps you awake - that, and the macabre desire to see just how bad it can get. The peak: watching Diesel's face as he uselessly tries to `emote' at the surprisingly flaccid climax. Along with the billion bucks it will safely liberate from the pockets of teens worldwide, "XXX" should also garner at least one award: surely it's the unbackable favorite to take out the inaugural Razzie for Worst Editing. The escape-from-the-Colombian-drug-lords sequence plays like an excerpt from "The A-Team".