Salocin

xXx Review

Woe is me, for despite my better judgement and the advice of erstwhile and respected critics, I went to see xXx, and have once again put good money in the coffers of people who make bad films. I do not seem to learn.

After I saw Pitch Black, I thought that Vin Diesel had made a stunning breakthrough. Perhaps not that versatile, as Riddick he nevertheless played the threatening, brooding, nasty but ultimately redeemable human being fantastically. Congratulations to whoever made the casting decision on that one. Shortly after, with The Fast and the Furious, the tone dropped slightly, but the high production values and the comparatively original theme of the underground car racing scene just about managed to keep the film above the low-water mark.

Then the devil appeared and said, "sign this". In this way has the action film gone the way of the porno movie where the story is an unfortunate necessity used as an excuse to expose one single thing. Only here it's stunts (extreme sports in particular) instead of flesh.

In xXx, Vin Diesel plays Xander Cage, a stunt-man good-guy anarchist, cliche-made-flesh, perhaps better described as a cliche-distributor that misfires at random intervals. As the film pointlessly lurches from one techno/hardrock soundtrack to the next, and the stunt men do one explosion/bike stunt/parachute jump/car wreck after another, our hero reluctantly spends the intervening seconds justifying the next trick.

Until recently, it was possible to say things like, "the script isn't so good but it's worth seeing just for the advances in special effects". No more.

Unfortunately, this film panders to the desire of millions to see a spy with (skin-deep) attitude blow stuff up with choreographed style, and the movie theatre I was at was full to the brim. I'd criticise these movie-goers more, but one of the seats was filled by yours truly - a fact I truly regret.

I'd have tried to explain the film in more detail, but unfortunately, there's no real story to speak of, nor are there any real moral dilemmas, character developments, real characters, realism (or at least the internal consistency that would allow me to suspend disbelief), or any of a multitude of other things that films used to need to succeed.

Go see this drunk, as a dare, or any other time when you will be able dodge responsibility for having seen it. Preferably, don't go to see it at all.

On a slightly more positive note, I notice that Riddick, a new film, is scheduled for release in 2004. Since it's named after the principal character in Pitch Black, one has to assume that Vin Diesel or his agent have noticed the rapid downward spiral and are hoping to salvage some pride by returning to a better project. But don't get your hopes up - without Radha Mitchell providing some counterpoint, and without the two original writers, I feel we may just have another off-the-shelf hardman "scripted" into a few situations, after which the action (and possibly the script) is handed over for safekeeping to a group of action characters who have no doubt fallen on their heads far more times than is healthy.