| xXx Rating:  Director: Rob Cohen Producer: Neal H. Moritz Writer: Rich Wilkes Director of Photography: Dean Semler Cast: Vin Diesel, Mountain Dew, Sobe, Motorola Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
 Click the photo above to buy extreme merchandise from xXx |
Review by: Ian Golding
8/11/02
Have you ever had a conversation with someone who really wanted to talk about his or her hobby and would, with no subtlety at all, steer the conversation to that topic?
"Yeah, I think that Taliban is sucky. You know what's not sucky? Building miniature ships in bottles."
That's kind of how xXx is. This film goes out of its way to place its central character, Xander Cage, in situations that he can only get out of by performing the most ludicrous "extreme" stunts in the world. It's ridiculous. Here's a good example: Cage has to infiltrate the bad guy's headquarters, which happens in the snow-covered mountains. How does Cage get there? He jumps out of an airplane with a snowboard on his feet. Okay, it's pretty stupid, but it's not off the scale retarded until he starts sky surfing on the way down, pulling tricks and spins, accompanied by a beating German Techno soundtrack... an extreme German Techno Soundtrack.
Okay, I'll recap the story real quick here, I guess. Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) is an extreme sports enthusiast who steals cars and drives them off of bridges for fun. He is kidnapped by the NSA and recruited, against his will, to be a secret agent. He reluctantly joins them, and then stuff explodes ...to the extreme.
I really didn't know a film with a profile this big could be this bad. Seriously. It is absolutely staggering how bad this movie is. Nothing is done right. Not one thing. The script is a mess, filled with the kind of mindless crap a seven year-old child would write. For example: The end sequence involves a robotic submarine that is equipped with poison gas missiles. At least they call it a submarine. See, I'm still not sure that the writer of xXx knows what a submarine is. It never goes underwater, and goes eighty miles an hour on the surface of the water on skids. Umm... that's a hydroplane. This isn't the only stupid mistake this writer made, but it's the only one that sticks out. Even fairly simple staples of action movies are done horribly here. You want to know what Xander's kick-ass catch phrase is? The one that will be all over T-shirts, the one everyone will start saying, and in a few months until politicians start working it into their speeches, at which point it will have "jumped the shark" and no longer be cool? Here it is: "Welcome to the Xander zone!" Yep. That, my friends, is a professional writer.
I don't have anything else to say here. The writing is bad. The cinematography is bad. The directing is awful, and Vin Diesel is one of the worst actors working today. Attention Dan Tester: Vin Diesel will wipe the floor with your precious Ben Affleck as the worst actor alive. I'd be willing to bet as much money as I can scrounge up from my car's floorboards that, in the sucky-actor decathlon, Vin Diesel would win 7 out of the ten events, and the "speaking like a drunk longshoreman who has had all of his teeth knocked out" category wouldn't even be close.
Do me a favor. Don't see xXx. Or
at least don't pay to see it. If they make money, it will only
encourage everyone involved, as well as the rest of Hollywood
that this is the type of tripe you want to see, and they'll make
more crap like this (too late -- xXx II is already in pre-production
with Diesel snaring a ((I believe I read this correctly)) whopping
$20 million paycheck to reprise his role -- Warren). If you
must see it, pay for another movie and sneak in. Or download it
from the Internet. I don't care what you do; just promise me that
you'll help me draw a line in the sand here. Scooby-Doo was
one thing. It was a franchise and could be explained away. Don't
give Hollywood the idea that you want more of this. There. I've
made my plea. If this crap becomes more and more common, (and
from the looks of the trailers before xXx, it might already
be on the way) it's not my fault. It's yours.
Let's all talk about it in the
message boards.
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