xXx


hmmm, not very good...

I started to watch xXx and to be honest I was very disappointed. I was expecting a James Bond style film, and though I got Bond style effects, this was no Bond movie... Virtually no plot and a poor script meant that I didn't even bother watching the end.

For a movie that would like to think of itself as the future of the action / espionage picture, xXx uses a surprising number of jokes and stunts lifted directly from the Roger Moore Bond era while the actual premise resembles a sex-change for Nikita. Vin Diesel's Xander Cage--an extreme sports daredevil recruited by spymaster Samuel L Jackson for a covert mission in Prague--may be Blofeld-bald, pumped-up with testosterone, tattooed like a graffiti-covered wall and given to driving sports cars off bridges for fun, but he turns out to be a disappointingly square goodie-goodie when the quips and bullets are flying. Even the slinky heroine (Asia Argento), a double agent within a mad ex-Soviet gang called Anarchy 99, laughs at the idea that a walking cue ball with three Xs tattooed on his neck could ever be a secret agent.

There's one stunt scene that will be remembered as a classic, as xXx triggers an avalanche and snowboards ahead of the fall. But there's too much of the falling-out-of-planes, straddling-and-defusing-jet-propelled-germ-bombs, blasting-every-baddie-in-the-place business that makes it too familiar. Enough material for several great trailers, but next time they'll need a script.

You can even buy it from amazon!

Posted: Sat - December 3, 2005 at 09:46 PM         | |

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