Rating: 7/10
Review date: June 26, 2003
Vin Diesel stars as Xander Cage, an extreme sport athlete who is “recruited” by Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) from the National Security Agency to infiltrate a Czechoslovakian underground group called Anarchy 99. To summarize, this movie is all about mindless (in other word, rather unbelievable) actions, fast cars and hot chicks… Turn off your brain, sit back and get ready to save the world while stopping to grab the chick along the way (wait a minute, does that sound like James Bond?).
Just as the trailer suggested, this movie is laden with non-stop actions albeit rather unbelievable ones by a certain bald man which goes by the name of Vin Diesel. His acting is (as expected) rather flat although it’s not all that bad actually. Diesel has the making of a perfect action movie star with the right attitude, the right image and the right muscles to be successful.
Samuel L. Jackson as Agent Gibbons doesn’t give a good performance although I believe that his character need not show much expression either, let’s just say that he is there when he is needed to talk to the rebellious Xander Cage. The same thing can be said to Asia Argento as Yelena although she looks hot (and maybe even cute?) in that Gothic make-up. The rest of the cast are quite weak with the main villain (Marton Csokas as Yorgi) possibly being the lamest, they should have find an actor with more authority such as Gary Oldman in Air Force One or even Alan Rickman in Die Hard.
There is not much plot in the movie itself (as anticipated anyway) since the objective of the show is to showcase Diesel doing a lot of incredible stunts that you never thought possible. Personally, I was most impressed with the stunts that he performed on a motorcycle even though it looks too exaggerated.
Most of the action scenes are achieved using CGI technique and the result were somehow not too bad, although I feel that the avalanche scene was a bit weak. The CGI could have been polished better since it was quite obvious that the falling snow is computer-generated.
Overall, xXx is a good action movie with Vin Diesel accompanied by his biceps and his gruff manner. Director Rob Cohen managed to strike the right mix here with some loud music, over-the-top stunts and girls peppering the scenes here and there (with Asia Argento being the best of the bunch).
It is ultimately inevitable to compare it to James Bond although I believe that they don’t really differ much aside from a younger and maybe teen-ish feel that comes with xXx. Perhaps Cohen should have targeted a more mature audience and get an R rating instead of keeping the level of violence and vulgarities at a minimum which earns it a mere PG-13. Whether xXx will be a successful franchise remains to be seen, I will be looking forward to see the sequel which hopefully will be better than the original is.
Memorable quote: “Welcome to the Xander zone!”
-Vin Diesel as Xander Cage-
(c) Martin Taidy 2003