Oh yeah: Vin Diesel.
So Vin Diesel, along with Jason Statham, continues to appeal to me because he is continuing to demonstrate that bald, middle-aged men are still viable action stars. Or at least we like to think we are....!
I grabbed a 3D IMAX showing of this movie on a spare moment while on a work trip. I can't say I was "disappointed," exactly....I mean, I think I knew what I was getting when I went to see this movie. I saw the original xXx when it came out (skipped #2 though....no Vin Diesel, after all) so in one sense this was not unreasonable of me to want to see the sequel with the franchise's original character's return. Right? But on the other hand....I saw that trailer. Oh man, that trailer. The one with the jungle mountain skiing in Cuba:
Yeah, that one.
So instead of trying to comprehensively explain what this movie is, I thought I'd just point out the many, many odd issues I had with the movie. I'll preface with the caveat I did have fun with the movie......but it was kind of the same sort of fun I might have with watching a car derby, or playing a video game like Saint's Row III. You know....the "check your brain at the gates" kinda fun.
Anyway, my gripe list (kinda sorta spoilers ahead):
1. How is it that even as we watch Gibbons explode on screen I am thinking (correctly) "I bet he's not dead and he shows up at the end." This is an awful moment one minute in that I realize the entire plot I am about to see has become so formulaic that I already know the punches before they are thrown. It's a Save The Cat Script.
2. When Marke shows up (Toni Collette) I am also thinking, "I bet she's really behind this." Technically they "almost" foil this expectation by only making her turn on everyone in the end, but we kinda expected it the instant she showed up so....yeah.
3. Why doesn't Xander break his legs after jumping from the tower? Skiis don't make our ankle bones invulnerable to immense falls, and jungle foliage does not work as a perfect or even nominally ideal substitute for snow.
4. Even though it's not really referring to the actual Defcon status, how is it that superspy dude Xander Cage doesn't understand that Defcon 1 is not the one to worry about, Defcon 5 is???
5. Xander's girlfriend is young enough to be his daughter.....granddaughter, even by New Mexico (and probably Cuban) standards. Yaaaay middle-aged man action fantasies. I bet there's more of this as the movie progresses (sure enough, yes).
6. Xander has to sleep with a lot of women to get data that somehow the NSA couldn't just so he could say a funny punchline. Oiiiiiiii
7. It's nice seeing Donnie Yen in this movie. He has some serious martial arts skills, not so evident from his recent Rogue One outing.
8. I'm watching this movie in Austin, Texas, and thinking that it's demographically one of those "movies full of not-white people unless they are the villains" kind of modern trendy films (see: Rogue One) and wondering how it's selling around here. There's like 5 people in the theater on a Sunday. Look, I'm not trying to say Austin is extremely homogenous....but I come from New Mexico, and apparently I've been in NM so long now that being around this many white people in one town is making me kinda nervous. It's like Children of the Corn here. I'm back to being treated as exotic because of my Swedish name.
9. Queue obligatory lesbian (Ruby Red). Also, obligatory nerdy tech chick (Nina Dobrev). also, since when did being able to conduct a rave turn into a superspy power? And what did the paranoid Torch bring to the table, exactly? I never did figure out what his useful talent was.
10. Hey....they never did explain how Xiang (Donnie Yen) jumped seventy feet down from across a building through three inch thick plate-glass, land, and take out a room full of spies. They even lampshaded this when Xander points exactly the figures I provided above. I was expecting some sort of tech explanation but maybe the "he's XXX" is enough reason for this film's universe?
11. Russians show up then get blown up then never return. So the Russians were savvy enough to identify the hideout of the rogue agents (something NSA could not do and Xander did by sleeping with many women) but not savvy enough to pursue them later on?
12. I don't think freefall in a plane quite works like this movie thinks it does.
13. I don't think crashing satellites will be as destructive as this movie thinks they are. Certainly not the vast majority of them.
14. I don't think computers or the internet or satellites or jamming systems work quite the way this movie thinks they do.
15. So who was on the other end of the phone instructing Marke to turn on Xander and kill him? How was Marke so incompetent as to forget the body armor that they had supplied him? Or...you know,,,,just finish the job by shooting him in the head? Head canon theory: she didn't want to turn on Xander like her boss (Mr. President?) ordered her to, so deliberately didn't shoot him in the head, instead grouping the shot on his armored tank top thingy.
16. When they catch up to the rogue director why doesn't he have a conversation with Xiang, or imply some relationship? It was strongly implied at some point they had worked together....specifically, when the rogue agents attack, it's called out that Torch doesn't react to Xiang's intrusion like he anticipated it. So either Xiang was being played unwittingly (why?) or the director was aware of his plans....and that makes sense I guess since the Pandora's Box Xiang stole was a one-use thing. But....ugh.....so little explained here beyond "director wants to cause havoc, maybe even because he is anarchically determined to destroy civilization in disgust" and "Xiang wants the box to use it, at least until the end when he has a change of heart." Oh god my brain is hurting trying to figure out everyone's actual motives here. Literally the only one who's motives "seem" pure is Serena Unger's (Deepika Padukone) who is at least consistent.
17. Say that gets me back to the early part of the film....who was the dude on the motorcycle? He seemed competent until he was kicked off of it.
18. Come to think of it, can one really fault Marke and her boss for deciding to clean up all the "xXx" agents? These guys basically appear less reliable than using actual enemy spies for your information. They gang up and kill the entire room of directors early on (and miss the one corrupt director), fake their own deaths and hide in Cuba, come back and then change sides or motives on a fickle whim, eventually ganging up en masse to take out the rest of the NSA. Now that I think about it, the only thing that was even less surprising here was that they didn't just quietly drop a satellite on the whole gang without warning. If they'd just let Xander go, instead of trying to shoot him, they could have readily taken the whole crew out.
19. In fact on that last point: if your evil plan is to blow them up with a satellite drop, then why did they send in an angry mob of mercenaries in the first place? To blow up the mercs too?
20. Good thing Xander can pilot a cargo carrier plane that looks a lot like a SHIELD plane (from season one, as far as I've gotten) so efficiently that he can intercept a satellite dropping into orbit. And then outrun it. And also survive that fall on the cargo with the 'chute that deploys like 200 feet before impact.
Oh god my brain is hurting. I have to stop now.
Okay: without Vin Diesel this was a solid D. With Vin Diesel I make it a C-. I call this movie "watchable fun but you'll like it more if you're drunk."
Aftermath: I had a chance to rewatch xXx the original on Google Play. Having a chance now to review the original, I have to comment that yes, the sequel is just generally goofier and makes less sense (relatively speaking) than the original. The original xXx came at a time when it was in fact defying conventions in spy genre films, a genre which had been defined by the likes of James Bond, by casting the unusual role of Xander Cage as a sports Xtreme dude turned super-spy. But compared to the latest movie, the original was kind of....tame, really. Only one distinct ankle-breaking moment that I noticed, and even then it was more "believable" than the scenes in the latest film.
Still, the new movie captures the general spirit of it all, even if it's not half as original or inspired. If you liked the original xXx, I think you'll enjoy this one, too. I mean...worst case....watch it for inspiration in your next Tropicana Savage Worlds game!
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