xXx: Return of Xander Cage
Dustin Chase
Only when Ice Cube stepped in for part 2, did this fledgling excuse for a franchise slightly improve. Now that Fast & Furious commodity Vin Diesel (aka this generations Schwarzenegger/Van Damme) is popular again, his mediocre investments are being rebooted. This film in particular and almost everything Diesel is involved with, is pure sensory and no intelligence. Diesel franchise films provide pure escapism for viewers who don’t want to think about plot, cause and effect, or if something looks realistic or not. They want macho men doing death defying stunts and women who look like Playboy models, that’s the formula, that’s the audience. xXx is the generic brand of Fast & Furious. C-rate star power, a diminished budget and lowered expectations that frankly are not low enough.
Hurled out of retirement with the news of Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) death, Xander Cage (Diesel) is hired by NSA top dog Jane Marke (Collette) to recover a device known as Pandora’s box, that has the capability to send space satellites hurling towards a specific location on Earth. Cage assembles a raggedy looking team on the outside, but all part of the xXx community on the inside. They globe trot in a fancy government plane searching for the device and encountering operatives along the way that could be friend or foe, depending on their intentions with the destructive weapon.
The dialogue is some of the most appalling my ears have had the misfortune to hear in many years.
The women are outfitted in Fredricks of Hollywood (ultimately demeaned if it wasn’t for their strength and bravery), but represent nearly every ethnicity and attitude as they greatly outnumber the men in this franchise. Vin Diesel’s character again looks preposterous in that jacket with shorts that show off both his real tattoos and the ones the character sports. The dialogue is some of the most appalling my ears have had the misfortune to hear in many years. Even Oscar nominees Jackson and Collette succumb to the tragic stupidity of the script. So many of the action sequences are re-tooled from other genre films, even other Diesel films, that the action feels second rate to his previous endeavors. For someone who values acting and performance, or inventive screenplays above everything else that goes into making a movie, there is nothing for intelligent people to chew on here.
If you remove the action scenes from the nearly two hour film, you are left with about 28 minutes (and that is being kind) of plot and story that amounts to a lackluster short film. Motocross bikes that can surf on the water might be one of the most ridiculous (and bad CGI) action sequences of the entire year. And no matter what’s at stake, there is always time for a quip and a joke before and after fight scenes and explosions. Diesel knows how to play one character, and that’s himself. Yet again it’s the same performance, the same outcome, and the same insufferable disappointment, with how something this bad could ever make it to the big screen.
Final Thought
Vin Diesel is the Adam Sandler of action movies.