Product: xXx (2002)
Rating: 4.0
A buffed-up 007 without the suavity
The acquisition of polished good manners and social skills is, I suspect, less important in today's culture than it used to be. Therefore, Vince Diesel's Xander Cage action hero will be as big a hit with current, younger, theater audiences as the elegant Bond (JAMES Bond, if you please) was with earlier generations.XXX is the first release in what will certainly be a continuing series of Xander Cage adventures. Hollywood knows a gold mine when it stumbles over it. In this installment, Cage is an anti-social, tattooed Bad Boy hooked on extreme sports stunts, who's cornered into joining a U.S. intelligence agency by Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson). After a suitable period of, um, competency testing, America's newest hero is sent to Prague to gather information about a megalomaniacal anarchist named Yorgi (Marton Csokas). Of course, anybody keeping the world safe for democracy has to have the potential reward of TLC from an appreciative Babe. In XXX, the latter role is supplied by Yelena (Asia Argento), who starts out as Yorgi's hard-edged and edgy moll. Or is she? And it's a long overdue opportunity for American viewers to see something of Prague, a truly beautiful city that's apparently recovering nicely from its gloomy days behind the Iron Curtain.The nifty gadgets and death-defying stunts in XXX are satisfying and spectacular, especially the sequence involving the "fresh powder". However, since it's the rare action film nowadays that doesn't have eye-popping FX, those in this one simply meet what has become the average expectation. What lifts XXX above three stars is Xander's anti-establishment bad attitude. Had he been dressed up in a tux at any point, the total effect would have been lost. Once the novelty of his persona wears off - soon, I think, in my case - his Big Screen feats of derring-do will become so much Mindless Entertainment. Now, don't get me wrong. The periodic Bond flicks are mindless also, but the current actor in the title role, Pierce Brosnan, at least has demonstrated a capability for doing a thinking man's espionage caper, specifically the excellent screen adaptation of John le Carré's THE TAILOR OF PANAMA. Somehow, I don't see Diesel up to anything of such quality in the near future, if indeed ever.Perhaps it's just the sour grapes of an older movie goer, but down deep I'll maintain that Sean Connery's Bond (JAMES Bond, if you please), and perhaps even Brosnan's, could wipe up the floor with Xander Cage. Old age and cunning will trip up youth and inexperience.