xXx: The Return of Xander Cage - directed by D.J. Caruso
Oh boy - where to start with this one!
Being the third movie in a franchise usually means that you pretty much know what you are in for.
Being the third movie is a Vin Diesel franchise firms up the certainty of what you are going to get.
(Yes, I know that the second film was sans-Diesel)
In the case of the xXx movies it is Diesel's particular take on the James Bond films.
Of course that means that sophistication, intelligence and class are replaced with blunt force, street smarts and a middle finger.
The first xXx movie came out way back in 2002 and returned $277,000,000 on a budget of $70,000,000
Being as how Diesel's Xander Cage was missing presumed dead for part two his duties were taken over by Ice Cube.
2005's "XXX: State of the Union" was made for $60,000,000 and made $71,000,000 worldwide.
I didn't see it myself because it looked plain awful but this third film had some good advance word and some interesting casting so the time seemed right to dip a toe back in.
This time the plot concerns a device that can be used to drag satellites out of orbit and send them hurtling to Earth with seeming pinpoint accuracy.
Of course it is called Pandora's Box.
Xander Cage must be dragged back into service when former XXX boss Augustus Gibbons along with potential new recruit Neymar (yes- the Footballer) are killed by a falling satellite in the opening scene.
We then flash forward to Xander climbing a transmitter tower, twiddling with some electronics and then jumping approximately 100 feet to earth on skis.
He lands with nary a twinge to his knees and hurtles through the jungle and streets of the Dominican Republic pursued by what are possibly cops.
His mission it turns out is to activate free tv screenings of a football match for the locals because Xander is just that cool and that decent a guy.
So, yes - as usual the entire movie is an utter vanity project for Vin Diesel.
Women fall all over themselves around him and seen unable to resist jumping into bed with him even when he is decked out in the most ridiculous fur coat that I have ever seen!
You see James Bond sleeps with a lot of women so Xander must sleep with even more.
He is completely in charge of any situation- even those of which he effectively creates.
In an early scene he is surrounded by heavily armed soldiers but he has already figured out that they just want to recruit him because he saw a guy buying a soda, a woman boarding a bus and also an old gent spoke to him in English.
So he grabs an assault rifle from one soldier and fires it randomly around in the general direction of not only the soldiers but the general public as well.
When government cold fish Jane Mark (Toni Collette) challenges him on his action he tells her that even if he had been wrong about the blanks loaded into the weapon he was pretty sure that the men were all decked out in body armour.
Shame about the citizens caught in the crossfire in that scenario though huh?
Stupid.
Stupid is the best word to describe the script although ridiculous, insulting and underwritten are also pretty good.
Donnie Yen's first scene involves his character Xiang jumping a stupid distance from one high-rise building to another then falling and equally stupid distance downwards through a skylight into a room full of armed men.
He grabs the Pandora's Box, avoids every single bullet as he returns fire with 100% accuracy until he runs out of ammo then beats up the remaining adversaries with foot and fist.
An idiotic plan that nonetheless works because Xiang - like Xander- is just that good!
And that is just the first fifteen minutes.
With the introduction of a huge number of supporting cast members including Rory McCann's (The Hound from Game of Thrones) stunt driver who seems to crash more than drive, Nina Dobrev's super smart and equally horny tech expert, Ruby Rose's sniper, Tony Jaa's jumping, yelling Talon and Deepika Padukone's mysterious Serena.
All of them are XXX agents and of course they will team up to fight the real enemy who you should be able to spot within minutes of the movie starting.
I know.... it is supposed to be big dumb fun and it certainly isn't ever boring.
I did plain give up on it at least three times, slipping the IMAX 3D glasses off in amazement at the ridiculousness of what was on the screen.
The problem isn't the stupidity of the plot but the contrast between the script and the things that are worthy of praise.
Director D.J. Caruso is good and does a fine job stitching this mess together.
Likewise DP Russell Carpenter who shot "True Lies" and "Titanic" for James Cameron and is very, very good at his job makes this movie look far better than it deserves.
I also liked the work of Donnie Yen who is the only actor in the film who looks remotely like he is capable of the action we are asked to believe the characters can pull off.
Ruby Rose who I feared would be annoying from the trailers is actually rather good too.
Pretty much everyone else is merely tolerable apart from an underused Hermione Corfield ("Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation") who is so lovely and sounds so appealing with her English accent that she threatened to make me forget how absurd the scene that she was in was.
I fear that movies like this will be held up as examples of great action movies by a generation of filmgoers and it is a great example only of a steady dumbing down of the genre amid a stream of underwritten dross that insults the audience's intelligence and claims that it's just a bit of fun and doesn't need to make sense.
Why shouldn't a motorcycle suddenly sprout water skis? Why shouldn't a dropped machine pistol spray bullets around and hit only bad guys? When Xander advises that he is going to Kamikaze a military jet into a satellite the response if 'It's suicide'...... Yep- that is what Kamikaze means!
Doesn't have to make sense because - It's only fun!
And sure- it zips by fast enough and there are a few decent action moments but always they are punctuated by awful dialogue or over the top parts.
Every single thing in this film exists to make its star look good from the pretty girls throwing themselves at him to the absurd action to the many instances where Xander is revealed to be a really, really, really good and kind guy.
I would love to see the talent behind the cameras use the budget of this film to make an action movie that is exciting, tense and logical but as this ridiculous, stupid, nonsensical movie is likely to make many times more than its budget back I guess we can look forward to more of the same.
Sigh.
RATING: 64 / 100
CONCLUSION: Stupid but pretty vanity piece that has a few things to recommend it but nonethless is yet another mindless vanity piece for Diesel. Underwritten, over edited nonsense.
Starring: Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Toni Collette, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Ruby Rose, Samuel L Jackson, Hermione Corfield, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Rory McCann, Ice Cube, Tony Gonzalez, Michael Bisping
Screenplay: F. Scott Frazier
Music Score by: Robert Lydecker & Brian Tyler
Cinematography: Russell Carpenter
Edited by: Vince Filippone & Jim Page
Running Time: 107 minutes
Language: English
Rated: M - Violence and Profanity - both pretty mild
Running Time: 107 minutes
Language: English
Rated: M - Violence and Profanity - both pretty mild
Being the third movie in a franchise usually means that you pretty much know what you are in for.
Being the third movie is a Vin Diesel franchise firms up the certainty of what you are going to get.
(Yes, I know that the second film was sans-Diesel)
In the case of the xXx movies it is Diesel's particular take on the James Bond films.
Of course that means that sophistication, intelligence and class are replaced with blunt force, street smarts and a middle finger.
The first xXx movie came out way back in 2002 and returned $277,000,000 on a budget of $70,000,000
Being as how Diesel's Xander Cage was missing presumed dead for part two his duties were taken over by Ice Cube.
2005's "XXX: State of the Union" was made for $60,000,000 and made $71,000,000 worldwide.
I didn't see it myself because it looked plain awful but this third film had some good advance word and some interesting casting so the time seemed right to dip a toe back in.
This time the plot concerns a device that can be used to drag satellites out of orbit and send them hurtling to Earth with seeming pinpoint accuracy.
Of course it is called Pandora's Box.
Xander Cage must be dragged back into service when former XXX boss Augustus Gibbons along with potential new recruit Neymar (yes- the Footballer) are killed by a falling satellite in the opening scene.
We then flash forward to Xander climbing a transmitter tower, twiddling with some electronics and then jumping approximately 100 feet to earth on skis.
He lands with nary a twinge to his knees and hurtles through the jungle and streets of the Dominican Republic pursued by what are possibly cops.
His mission it turns out is to activate free tv screenings of a football match for the locals because Xander is just that cool and that decent a guy.
 |
| Vin Diesel - skateboards, broads and fur coats that would make a pimp blush |
Women fall all over themselves around him and seen unable to resist jumping into bed with him even when he is decked out in the most ridiculous fur coat that I have ever seen!
You see James Bond sleeps with a lot of women so Xander must sleep with even more.
He is completely in charge of any situation- even those of which he effectively creates.
In an early scene he is surrounded by heavily armed soldiers but he has already figured out that they just want to recruit him because he saw a guy buying a soda, a woman boarding a bus and also an old gent spoke to him in English.
So he grabs an assault rifle from one soldier and fires it randomly around in the general direction of not only the soldiers but the general public as well.
When government cold fish Jane Mark (Toni Collette) challenges him on his action he tells her that even if he had been wrong about the blanks loaded into the weapon he was pretty sure that the men were all decked out in body armour.
Shame about the citizens caught in the crossfire in that scenario though huh?
Stupid.
Stupid is the best word to describe the script although ridiculous, insulting and underwritten are also pretty good.
Donnie Yen's first scene involves his character Xiang jumping a stupid distance from one high-rise building to another then falling and equally stupid distance downwards through a skylight into a room full of armed men.
He grabs the Pandora's Box, avoids every single bullet as he returns fire with 100% accuracy until he runs out of ammo then beats up the remaining adversaries with foot and fist.
An idiotic plan that nonetheless works because Xiang - like Xander- is just that good!
And that is just the first fifteen minutes.
With the introduction of a huge number of supporting cast members including Rory McCann's (The Hound from Game of Thrones) stunt driver who seems to crash more than drive, Nina Dobrev's super smart and equally horny tech expert, Ruby Rose's sniper, Tony Jaa's jumping, yelling Talon and Deepika Padukone's mysterious Serena.
All of them are XXX agents and of course they will team up to fight the real enemy who you should be able to spot within minutes of the movie starting.
 |
| Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, Nina Dobrev, Ruby Rose and Hermione Corfield (not a shot from the film) |
I did plain give up on it at least three times, slipping the IMAX 3D glasses off in amazement at the ridiculousness of what was on the screen.
The problem isn't the stupidity of the plot but the contrast between the script and the things that are worthy of praise.
Director D.J. Caruso is good and does a fine job stitching this mess together.
Likewise DP Russell Carpenter who shot "True Lies" and "Titanic" for James Cameron and is very, very good at his job makes this movie look far better than it deserves.
I also liked the work of Donnie Yen who is the only actor in the film who looks remotely like he is capable of the action we are asked to believe the characters can pull off.
Ruby Rose who I feared would be annoying from the trailers is actually rather good too.
Pretty much everyone else is merely tolerable apart from an underused Hermione Corfield ("Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation") who is so lovely and sounds so appealing with her English accent that she threatened to make me forget how absurd the scene that she was in was.
I fear that movies like this will be held up as examples of great action movies by a generation of filmgoers and it is a great example only of a steady dumbing down of the genre amid a stream of underwritten dross that insults the audience's intelligence and claims that it's just a bit of fun and doesn't need to make sense.
Why shouldn't a motorcycle suddenly sprout water skis? Why shouldn't a dropped machine pistol spray bullets around and hit only bad guys? When Xander advises that he is going to Kamikaze a military jet into a satellite the response if 'It's suicide'...... Yep- that is what Kamikaze means!
Doesn't have to make sense because - It's only fun!
And sure- it zips by fast enough and there are a few decent action moments but always they are punctuated by awful dialogue or over the top parts.
Every single thing in this film exists to make its star look good from the pretty girls throwing themselves at him to the absurd action to the many instances where Xander is revealed to be a really, really, really good and kind guy.
I would love to see the talent behind the cameras use the budget of this film to make an action movie that is exciting, tense and logical but as this ridiculous, stupid, nonsensical movie is likely to make many times more than its budget back I guess we can look forward to more of the same.
Sigh.
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