Vin Diesel Wasn't Bourne For This (xXx (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	xXx (DVD)
Date:	26/03/09 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast-paced and full of action

Disadvantages: Daft plot, adolescent script

A review of just the film, the region 2 DVD was released back in 2003 and is easily found online for less than a fiver.

In the face of a new and imposing threat to national security, the NSA decides that it needs to review its approach to counter-terrorism. Acknowledging that in this day and age the old ways just don't work anymore, agent Augustus Gibbons decides that the agency needs to find somebody that can work on the same level as the criminals. Enter Xander Cage, a twenty-something action junkie who lives for the next adrenaline-fuelled escapade. Abducted by national agents, Cage finds himself forced to undertake a series of tests before the agency forces him to go undercover and get the low down on a new unit calling itself Anarchy 99. But as Cage soon finds out, this secret agent thing isn't quite as easy in real life as it looks on the PS2....

By 2003, film executives came to the conclusion that the James Bond concept had all but run out of steam. Die Another Day had received a lukewarm reception one year earlier and whilst the Bond team was faced with the prospect of replacing the aging Pierce Brosnan, the competition identified a gap in the market. Whilst Jason Bourne presented a harder, darker, more exciting kind of secret agent, the franchise wasn't as family-friendly as James Bond and lacked that fun factor that audiences craved. So a new hero was born and Xander Cage came to our screens.

If James Bond was the poison, xXx was to be the cure. Acknowledging the changing world around us, xXx took the traditional secret agent adventure and turned it on its head, ditching the tuxedo and bowtie for sunglasses and body art. The world's problems were being caused by an upcoming generation of technical experts, exploiting technology like the Internet for their own gains and evading the authorities at every turn. Traditional agents just couldn't cut it anymore (as evidenced by a very early despatch of a Bond-alike at the start of the film) and it all required something rather new. What we got was something fairly different, but nothing like the kind of thing we probably wanted.

xXx is a curious kind of film that combines a strange mixture of sanitised action alongside occasional overt sexuality and accompanies it with a pounding MTV Generation soundtrack. It's tiring stuff, given only that the writers decided that the apparently limited intellect of the target demographic would never really be able to cope with anything more demanding and subsequently lays out a dumb plot that James Bond's writers would probably never have ever touched.

The film largely comprises three distinct chapters, namely the recruitment, the placement and the development of Xander Cage as an agent and hero. It's humorously done, but not in a tongue-in-cheek way. xXx's script comes straight from the Bad Boys school of writing where (minus the constant use of sexual swear words) our hero has a smart answer to every situation. It doesn't matter how dangerous or deadly the predicament, Xander Cage will have a solution and a smart comment, normally involving ingredients of game play that he learnt from spending hours in front of a Playstation. It's a bizarre kind of message, almost suggesting to the youth of the time that burning their eye sockets out with a constant barrage of shooters and Grand Theft will actually benefit them somewhere in the long run, although a softer critic might argue that it's simply trying to acknowledge that it's not such a harmful pastime after all. It's all the cue for a relentless barrage of snowboarding, parachuting and postulating around Prague as Xander Cage digs himself deeper and deeper into a plot to unleash anarchy on the world.

Always conscious that this is supposed to be the equal but opposite to James Bond, the writers make every attempt to distinguish Xander Cage from his Fleming-created counterpart. Where Bond might have used guile and seduction to get his way, Cage simply goes in all guns blazing, notably in an early scene in a nightclub where he dobs in an unwelcome police partner simply to court favour with the bad guy. Where Bond has an eye for the ladies, Cage has more of an eye for the gadgets, meaning that xXx is far less likely to attract the criticisms of misogyny and sexism that Roger Moore found himself exposed to twenty years earlier. It makes it more of a film for the boys too, a sort of "If T3 Magazine Made Movies" tribute to film making that never misses an opportunity for a gratuitous shot of a fast car.

Understandably, many of the Bond-isms are still rife, but altered to an extent for the new generation. Samuel L Jackson's agent Gibbons is a sort of disfigured antidote to M's starchiness, all fast-talking and full of reality checks. Asia Argento is the equivalent of a Bond Girl, except she doesn't look like a supermodel and isn't (quite) so easily swayed by the leading man's charms. There's a twenty-something equivalent to Q, whose verbal capability comes straight from the "totally cool" school of thinking and whose adoration of Cage and gadgets is in stark contrast to Q's stifled disapproval of James Bond. The central plot has the same scope and scale as a Bond movie but, notably, the leading villain Yorgi (an ineffective Marton Csokas) is really in it just for the hell of it, without a single whiff of monetary gain or world domination. The Aston Martin is replaced by a GTO and whereas Bond would shoot to kill, Cage is really only licensed to shoot to tranquilise. Director Rob Cohen had just had a big hit with The Fast and The Furious and employs that same school of film making here. It's continually loud and brash and almost gives you a cheeky wink as it hurtles on to the next ridiculous action sequence.

All these things make it an enjoyable enough romp, and there's no shortage of stunts to feast your eyes upon. But the negatives come just as thick and fast. Diesel is only sporadically likeable. His physique works well (muscles and tattoos are unquestionably hot) but he hasn't really got any kind of warmth or likeability that engages the audience. He's also bizarrely unsexy, slobbering all over Asia Argento as though he'd rather have a nice cup of tea and he probably wouldn't even be able to spell suave, let alone pretend to be it. The action is often ridiculous, and not in that likeable way that Bond used to get away with it. In xXx we're supposed to believe it all a bit more and when Cage somehow manages to snowboard in front of a million-tonne avalanche and then just walk away, our tolerance is pushed to its limit. The script is infrequently awful, sometimes sounding not unlike it was rejected from the Stormbreaker pitch and has a terribly juvenile feel to it. After all, who uses the words "secret agent" anymore, except for Anthony Horrowitz?

As such, the finished film is instantly forgettable. It's one of those action films that's just about alright but has nothing to redeem it past the first and final viewing. It was reasonably well received at the time of its release but, curiously, Diesel was keen not to be typecast and bowed out after one movie, resulting in an absolutely dreadful sequel that sealed the franchise's fate once and for all. It's no surprise really, given only that very soon, Xander's 'oh so cool' body art would pass more than a slight resemblance to the logo for Simon Cowell's replacement for Pop Idol.

Summary: James Bond's short-lived replacement