Review of XXX! (2011) by James S — 19 Apr 2012

Any film that begins with a guy getting shot dead on stage at a Rammstein concert and continues with Vin Diesel para-surfing off the back of a sports car before it explodes in a fiery ball to tune of Drowning Pool's track 'Bodies' has got to be good. In fact, when you first see it, this opening may well seem like the best thing ever, and I've seen women. Naked.

XXx finds Vin Diesel playing the wrestler style named Xander Cage, a sort of extreme sports terrorist who videos himself sticking it to the man. The man however, wants him to infiltrate a European terrorist cell and find out all he can about them before they unleash chaos with some biological weapons. It's not a complex or subtle plot but this is a not a movie which concerns itself with such things.

What is does concern itself with is a series of action sequences, most of which are pretty mind blowing. There's a war zone type shoot out in Columbia, an avalanche burying snow chase, both of which could easily stand up with some of the greatest action scenes of all time. The mountain rush pursued by the avalanche is particularly well done and breathtaking. It makes the snow boarding scene at the beginning of James Bond's A View To A Kill look like Ski Sunday.

XXx does owe a certain debt to the adventures of 007. The plot is remarkably like a Bond movie while Cage even has a technology guru to help him out with weapons and stuff in the mould of Q. This being a Vin Diesel movie though, he doesn't go for a tuxedo dinner with his nemesis but does find a gyrating semi-nude lady in the room his adversary gives him for the night.

Diesel is pretty much perfect for this kind of movie. He's dumb but likeable, much like the film. Given that he isn't an actual secret agent also makes him much more plausible in the role than if the character had been written as one. Asia Argento makes for a suitable Bond girl style love interest. Marton Csokas is good as the euro-villain and his grand plans at least make sense. Samuel L Jackson is perhaps the weak link on the cast list as Cage's CIA handler and over acts terribly in every scene he is involved in. He does get some good lines though.

XXx isn't a film that is going to send you endlessly debating it's artistic skill into the night but it should provoke a loud cry of "Holy sh*t, that was freaking AWESOME!".