Loved the movie, hate the website: x X x. Why do these clowns have to make things so difficult? Sure, have it look and sound cool, have plenty of extras like games and wallpaper, but how about also providing the basic information like cast and crew. Even IMDB doesn’t have a good handle on this film.
Enough of that. Vin Diesel breaks out in this film, and breaks out hard. Even reviewers who panned the movie praise the actor. My opinion is that Triple-Ex is the next big action franchise, not Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan or Daredevil (coming early next year), or the Rock as Scorpion King. Actually, I think all four of these actors will do fine and will make numerous action movies that gross lots of dollars. X-Men, if X2 does well next year, will go on for quite a few years although no one actor dominates that series. But Diesel showed more here in one outing than these others have in several opportunities.
The script is by Rich Wilkes, whose previous contributions are highlighted by Airheads and The Jerky Boys, and who apparently spent most of the last five years brainstorming on this concept. I can just imagine him watching Bond after Bond, Arnold after Bruce after Sly, night after night, and thinking what would be the next logical step. He must have kept coming back to James Bond as the perfect model for a new franchise. Who could blame him? Die Another Day is the 20th film in the series, it’s survived through five actors in the role, and countless writers and directors. Bond, though, in many ways is so last century.
So Triple-Ex updated every which way. The character could be any ethnicity except Asian, the nationality is American, but he’s still, in the end, a patriot. The music is completely in your face, except for a disappointing little symphonic theme at the end. The car is as grungy as the character, just the opposite of Bond in both ways. In quite a few ways, xXx is just like 007: the women dig him, he’s always in conflict with his boss, he has a cool R&D team to supply neat gadgets, and he waits until the timer on the bomb shows 0:02…0:01 before saving the world.
Strong supporting cast: Samuel Jackson is the total pro although the scarring seems a touch too much. Asia Argento is bootylicious as well as intelligent. Marton Csokas, the baddie, looks Eastern European but comes from New Zealand where he did numerous roles in TV shows like Xena, Hercules, and Farscape. The actor who plays this movie’s version of Q is good too, reminds me a lot of Alias’s Marshall Flinkman, but I can’t tell you who plays him because the website is so crappy.
One jarring problem, which perhaps they’ll fix for the next go round: why do Jackson and Diesel work for the NSA? Sure, it’s a real American spy shop but the NSA is completely about elint, electronic intelligence. That is, these are the guys monitoring and processing every phone call and every email. They don’t do humint, or field work by humans. Why doesn’t xXx work for the CIA? This movie didn’t begin filming until after 9/11 last year so they could have used the higher profile of the agency after that tragedy. Hmm.
Director Rob Cohen cranked it up several notches from last year’s release, The Fast and The Furious (which I saw recently but didn’t review). The pace matches the music, pounding and throbbing. He puts lots of hotties on display but no real time wasted in bed. Good foreshadowing, good use of high explosives and imaginative tech. Several notches above The Skulls, that piece of Joshua Jackson college dreck.
Cohen should have pushed harder for a producer credit–Vin Diesel got one–because that will be worth money when they replace him as director but that’s his mistake. Neil Moritz, the producer, has a nose for money, just look at his track record. And this movie had a good, but not great, $46 million opening weekend. Austin Powers in Goldmember did $25 million better two weeks ago and Signs did $14 million better last weekend. Diesel, by the way, was paid $10 million for his time and will get “double that” for the 2004 sequel according to an exec at production house Revolution Studios.
Recommended unless you’re an old fart–Diesel is worth the price of admission.
BillSaysThis 