You know how everything is a bit over the top in THE BIG LEBOWSKI? You know how some powerful rich guy involves a man that does his own thing, his own way and does it for nobody but himself, then makes that guy do his thing?
Now – imagine a high testosterone ball sweat soaked flick about a chiseled tattooed Adonis that doesn’t care about anything but the freedom to do as he pleases. To be his own man, to pursue his own whims. Right out of the start gate we learn that Xander Cage, his friends call him X, does his own thing. Think of Xander as a cross between Snake Plissken - The Dude - um... and well Vin Diesel.
Imagine an Extreme Sports God that watched JACKASS and thought… I CAN BEAT THAT! Now, for my money, I want to see the XANDER ZONE show on TV for real. I want to see him punish Jack Valenti and the voting members of the MPAA. I want to see Xander unleashed on Joe Lieberman and Jesse Helms. I want to watch Xander bring down Televangelists and revisit their hypocrisy a thousand fold upon them. The aggressive guerilla terrorist against the corporate asses that brought us the disasters at ENRON and well… you get the idea. The idea for his show is fantastic. A non-violent domestic televised and internet distributed extreme exhibitionist terrorist against modern hypocrisy.
There was something truly beautiful about that. It is in this opening introduction to Xander Cage that you really get to be brought into the charisma bubble of cool that is Vin Diesel. He’s looking dead into camera and telling a self-righteous political asshole that … well… essentially… “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUCK A STRANGER IN THE ASS!” Now he doesn’t put it that eloquently, but then this wasn’t written by the Coen Brothers… THE MIND REELS AT THAT THOUGHT!
Once he’s brought into the fold of America’s Spies and Spy training… Well, all I can say is… hehehehe… The movie has entered an insane place.
Now, it is at this point in the film… Immediately after the Diner scene where you have to ask yourself if you believe in the Xander Zone. Do you believe?
Do you believe that Vin Diesel can defy the laws of physics as handed down by underpaid High School teachers throughout the ages? Do you believe that Vin Diesel’s mere physical contact with a normal dirt bike, can transform it into an unbreakable super machine able to leap tall buildings… make that exploding tall buildings… in a single bound? Do you believe good guys can say shit to Danny Trejo and not immediately get killed without hesitation? You see… Xander Cage is a legendary eXXXtreme sports star that decided not to sellout. He’s taken his SUPERHUMAN skills and instincts into the world where he can push further than even Extreme Sports will allow. He’s 2 x’s further than anyone else on the planet and he eats coal and shits diamonds. He is a badass.
If you can buy that. If you’re willing to believe in Xander Cage and Vin Diesel, then XXX is going to be one helluva fun ride. It was for me, in fact I’m seeing it again tomorrow night, and ya know what… I’ll probably take a friend this weekend. Is it worth a triple view? Well, Vin Diesel is that cool for me. Vin makes me hate genetics, he’s that complete fantasy action hero thing. He isn’t overbuilt like Arnie, or steroid pumped like Stallone. Instead… he reminds me of one of my all time favorite comic book heroes… Richard Corben’s DEN from the NEVERWHERE series – which most of you are most familiar from the small sequence from HEAVY METAL. I’ll discuss that later on.
Now, if this movie was just Vin Diesel doing a lot of cool impossible shit… well, that would be enough for me, but there are 3 other actors that I like in XXX beyond the fact that Vin Diesel owns planet Earth in my book.
1. Sam “That’s a small price to pay for putting foot to ass for my country” Jackson. Ok, Sam Jackson is simply the only man on this planet that I would 100% buy telling Vin Diesel what to do. I can see Sam simply unhinging and schooling Vin at any second, throughout the movie. I mean, think about it. Have you ever thought of M as anything other than some fucking paper pusher? Not me. Sam seems genuinely delighted to have a new action figure that might kick one third of the ass that he once did. That scarred face, that milky eye… There’s furious anger buried beneath his smiling cool exterior. He knows what to do and how to do it. I love Sam in this film. Big surprise eh?
2. Marton “Now we can Party!” Csokas. Now, he’s a little known actor from New Zealand (magic country you might have heard of) and you probably remember him from the tiny part of Celeborn – that guy standing to Cate Blanchette’s right as the fellowship meets her the first time in FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS. Now, he didn’t really give off much personality in that film, but in XXX – he has some fun. He isn’t the cackling rule the world sort of guy. He doesn’t believe anybody should rule anything. He’s an anarchist, which is different from those nihilists, those bastards don’t believe in anything, he believes in anarchy… Gives him an ethos, so he isn’t totally evil. He believes the only way to hit the reset button on humanity, where we can all experience true freedom, is to tear it all apart. Just tear down the walls, the governments and the bullshit that tells you not to cross anywhere but at fucking crosswalks. That tell you that when you park at those damn poles, you have to put money in. This is a bad guy with something I can get behind. Ripping up the hypocrisy of the world through the deaths of a few major population centers and the beginning of a real world wide war… Well… that might be taking it a bit too far, but hey… I respect the message. Marton does a good job with the character of Yorgi.
Now Yorgi’s mates… the brotherhood of Anarchy 99… well, they kinda rule in a loser sort of way too. When you hear Yorgi’s brother call out to a hole in the wall at this one club… “BITCHES COME!!!” I just couldn’t help but flash to the beautiful mirrored line from the lovely Clarence Boddicker, all those years ago when those sweet lips of his pursed up and said, “BITCHES LEAVE!!!” There was something classic and cool about the inflection of both lines. Something hilariously misogynistic, yet despite that… cool and fun. Something so politically wrong that it ruled. Now I don’t want to get your hopes up, the dialogue in this film isn’t all at that high standard, some of it is merely witty and downright clunky – that last cigarette line of Vin’s comes to mind. But there are some lovely bright moments.
And then…
3. Asia Argento -- Now I’ve read the impotent comments of some monkeys in Quint’s interview talkback that don’t get what the big deal is about Asia Argento. I believe I remember one stud’s comment that he’s “BANGED” hotter chicks than her. Well… Whether or not his dreams are reality or not, I will not go into here, but I will say this… 10 to 1… I bet you 10 to 1 that if you ever got Asia Argento in the sack, she’d show you some things that’d put inches on your dick and hair on your chest. Now, I have no basis for this. Well, ok… Maybe it is just that her Dad is Dario Argento, which makes her just intuitively cooler than most of the ‘babes’ we see in film. I mean, here’s a girl that feels at home making GORE & HORROR films… She’s into cool things and we know it. She has a killer accent. She is hot, not in that beautiful All-American girl way, but in that European way. Watching her eyes in this film, you just can’t help but be captured by their animalistic hunger. Her eyes have thoughts behind them and while I can’t be sure… I get the funny feeling, she ain’t thinking about baking cookies and cakes – NOT THAT THERE IS A DAMN THING WRONG WITH THOSE THOUGHTS MIND YOU! – but she’s got lascivious carnalities running behind those eyes. There are moments in this film where I get the idea that she is a cat toying with Vin Diesel, that this would be a girl that could get away with clawing him a bit… drawing a little blood and licking her paw. She was conceived by and during the conception of DEEP RED and was a wandering tot on the sets of SUSPIRIA and DAWN OF THE DEAD. So, Mr. Stud that’s banged hotter chicks, though I doubt it, but you have never banged a cooler chick, because frankly… Asia Argento is as cool a gal as has ever drawn breath. And you pick that up in this movie.
How are the stunts?
Well the stunts in XXX are extreme to the point of near disbelief. They are amazing, they are cool, they do kick lots of ass and make James Bond look tired by comparison. However, when you watch Xander Cage doing his Motorcycle acrobatics… I can’t help but think how much cooler Steve McQueen was in THE GREAT ESCAPE doing those types of stunts… but without computers, without wires and safety harnesses… There is something in the back of my head in modern films that always makes me aware of the fact that what I could be looking at is Animation. Whether or not it is or not… I’m just aware that it could be unreal. It is unfair to modern films, but it is a part of being a viewer in the modern age of fantastic digital wonders… you don’t have to wonder how they did it… you just think… DAMN COMPUTERS ARE COOL.
Having said that, as I watched I let myself believe in the moment that this was what was happening. That the mystical superhuman Vin Diesel badass power from beyond was allowing him to have the abilities far beyond those of mortal man. That’s fine, that’s cool… and I love that. You’ll see stunts and explosions bigger and more in your face than you’ve seen before.
I also love the ‘special bullets’ and the gadgets. I love that Vin’s spy car is a muscle car that is all offensive. I also love that he loves putting himself in danger. There’s something vaguely Errol Flynn about it. Something Douglas Fairbanks mixed with that thuggish ‘whatever’ he presents himself with.
Also – the clubs in this film rule. I want to go to a club that has gigantic lightning bolts being thrown about as a band plays. I want that BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN Lab Set Club. That’s just fucking cool. I dug the hell out of that. I mean, I can imagine getting seriously fucked up and happy in that club. TOO COOL.
Now, what didn’t I like?
Well, I would have loved to have this film be even more chaotic. I didn’t want to see Vin at the end of the film doing what Vin was doing. I wanted to see him right back out there putting the FUCK YOU to ‘the man’. This was too… Bond-like, and I’m tired of those endings. This guy isn’t for relaxing, he’s about reckless endangerment and high quality balls on the line acts of insanity with singular cool purpose. Question Authority and rub their face in shit! That’s Xander Cage, and that’s how he should go out with these films.
Two – The car chase. How does the guy that directed THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and those balls-exploding car chases make a car – cooler than any car in that film btw – seem slow? When they had to out-pace that thing they had to out-pace – we should have felt MACH 12. I mean, the audience should have had HIGHWAY HAIR, like we did after that last Semi-Run in THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. Now how that scene ended… Tres Cool. However, the pursuit was limp… and beneath this director.
Overall though… this movie was just fun. Pure fun. Don’t take it seriously, don’t bring physics into play, and don’t think a whole helluvalot about what is going on. This film is about VIN DIESEL BEING THE BAD ASS THAT HE IS!
Now that my review is over… As a public service to Geeks everywhere, I’m going to formally suggest that Vin Diesel – or some enterprising producer type get the rights to Richard Corben’s NEVERWHERE graphic novel and produce the film starring Vin Diesel as DEN. Vin loves Dungeons & Dragons and Fantasy – He’d stab two forks into this story and feast. I’ve included several images below to inspire the uninspired. Vin Diesel is DEN and I’d see that film over and over and over and over again. I mean, massive love. This is the R-rated hot as hell Fantasy project starring Vin Diesel that I want to see!!! Here ya go…
