Too much X-cess

>> XXX is occasionally fun

by CLAIRE PHILIPSON

The latest summer blockbuster action flick is both sustained and destroyed by the same hand-one of complete and total excess. In XXX, extreme sports hero Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) is enlisted by the American intelligence agency NSA to help bring down a group of Russian baddies called Anarchy 99. They’re plotting to obliterate governments everywhere by gassing cities and causing mass chaos and death. It becomes obvious any political motivation is merely a veneer to justify the murderous appetite of evil boss man Jorgi, played with steely-eyed cruelty by Martin Csokas.
Being the hip bad-boy that he is, Diesel fits in perfectly with the criminals during his undercover infiltration. But alas, as Hollywood blockbusters dictate, everything goes terribly wrong and shots must be fired, people killed and buildings destroyed. So what makes this movie different? Extreme sports, that’s what. Muscled hero Diesel doesn’t just run or drive sexy cars when he comes to the rescue, he snowboards and flies off the back of motorcycles, and the approach kind of works. It’s pretty hard to deny that watching aerial shots of someone riding down a huge Czech mountain is exhilarating. And while the motorcycle tricks aren’t inspirational, they are impressive.

Even Diesel himself wasn’t the complete buffoon I was expecting him to be. Granted, he looks incredibly vacant most of the time, slurring and mumbling his way through the feature. But shockingly, the scenes in which he displays intelligence and acute skills of observation don’t seem that far-fetched. He even manages to make a terribly written script kind of funny.

That’s where the positive aspects of XXX end. Director Rob Cohen spends the majority of the time that he’s not concentrating on Diesel’s acrobatics showing the Russian crew’s harem of scantily clad women lounging about, giggling and sometimes even doing a little pole dancing just for kicks. In the end, the enjoyable gratuitous action can’t really make up for the excessive bad qualities of the movie. You might as well give it a miss. :

XXX opens Friday, Aug. 8

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