xXx: Return of Xander Cage
Rollercoaster cinema without a rollercoaster. Vin Diesel's second appearance as stunt freak Xander Cage in xXx: Return of Xander Cage reveals the character as even calmer amidst death defying action than in xXx, made fifteen years earlier.
A second xXx, starring Ice Cube, came out in 2005. Lengthy separation between the first two films and the third might seem indicative of a lack of audience interest (the Ice Cube installment failed at the box office), but I suspect that Diesel's participation in several Fast and Furious films as well as steady work in movies throughout the fifteen year period until his "return" kept him away from this peculiar franchise blending government covert ops premises with an anarchistic anti-hero into extreme sports.
Xander Cage, once again, demonstrates right away his anti-establishment credentials by climbing a communications tower in the Dominican Republic, planting some kind of electronic device, and then making a spectacular Looney Tunes-esque getaway down a jungle-covered mountain on skis.
A countdown on a handheld device suggests he may have planted a bomb, but actually he's hacked a TV signal on behalf of poor fisherfolk wanting to see a football match.
Beloved by the common people, he spends the night enjoying sexy time with a curvaceous Latina. The next day the U.S. government approaches him, enlisting his aid in recovering Pandora, a device stolen by an Asian gang led by Xiang (Chinese action star Donnie Yen) and Serena (Deepika Padrone, a gorgeous Indian actress whose character will, naturally, become attracted to Xander Cage).
Toni Collette plays a horrible CIA official, ruthless in her job to get back Pandora. She acts as Xander's handler. Blonde and frosty, Collette does a good job at being loathsome. The CIA doesn't come off well in this movie; refreshing, and a big difference from the semi-pro government vibe one gets from watching xXx, a film released when 9/11 was recent.
Plot and plausibility hardly matter in this movie. Pandora can somehow interfere with satellites, making them crash on preselected points on the planet. The first one hits New York, apparently killing Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), the G-man with the burn scar on his face from the first two films in the series. No one can talk a load of crap, written in a script with the unlikelihood that a real person might communicate in such a flamboyant way, better than Samuel L. Jackson. He set that tone in Pulp Fiction a quarter of a century ago. He does it in Marvel movies as Nick Fury. I've decided he's having fun; seventy years old, playing a tough guy with a velvet tongue, unconcerned about playing cartoonish characters in between doing serious roles, more power to him.
That this film is preposterous should be obvious by now. My favorite set piece takes place on a huge cargo plane. A shootout ensues, the pilot takes a stray bullet to the head, the airplane goes into a parabola that looks more like a nosedive. The characters continue their fighting--Special Forces meatheads versus martial arts expert Xiang and Xander Cage--in a state of weightlessness. It's insane. It really looks like the actors and stuntmen performed this scene in a "Vomit Comet" type situation--the training undergone by astronauts before they go into space.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage made a shitload of money outside of the U.S. (where it didn't attract much attention). xXx4 began filming a month ago. Yeah!
I find slick entertaining movies fascinating because they don't require intellectual analysis. The surfaces in these films are great to look at, making them true escapism, something I am sometimes in the mood for when I've got too much going on in my life. Battle For the Planet of the Apes (fifth in the original series) is not a good movie but I'd watch it again for the entertainment value.
Some call these types of films "guilty pleasures." I understand the term but I don't feel guilty just because I like watching a Vin Diesel action movie now and then.
Vic Neptune
Rollercoaster cinema without a rollercoaster. Vin Diesel's second appearance as stunt freak Xander Cage in xXx: Return of Xander Cage reveals the character as even calmer amidst death defying action than in xXx, made fifteen years earlier.
A second xXx, starring Ice Cube, came out in 2005. Lengthy separation between the first two films and the third might seem indicative of a lack of audience interest (the Ice Cube installment failed at the box office), but I suspect that Diesel's participation in several Fast and Furious films as well as steady work in movies throughout the fifteen year period until his "return" kept him away from this peculiar franchise blending government covert ops premises with an anarchistic anti-hero into extreme sports.
Xander Cage, once again, demonstrates right away his anti-establishment credentials by climbing a communications tower in the Dominican Republic, planting some kind of electronic device, and then making a spectacular Looney Tunes-esque getaway down a jungle-covered mountain on skis.
A countdown on a handheld device suggests he may have planted a bomb, but actually he's hacked a TV signal on behalf of poor fisherfolk wanting to see a football match.
Beloved by the common people, he spends the night enjoying sexy time with a curvaceous Latina. The next day the U.S. government approaches him, enlisting his aid in recovering Pandora, a device stolen by an Asian gang led by Xiang (Chinese action star Donnie Yen) and Serena (Deepika Padrone, a gorgeous Indian actress whose character will, naturally, become attracted to Xander Cage).
Toni Collette plays a horrible CIA official, ruthless in her job to get back Pandora. She acts as Xander's handler. Blonde and frosty, Collette does a good job at being loathsome. The CIA doesn't come off well in this movie; refreshing, and a big difference from the semi-pro government vibe one gets from watching xXx, a film released when 9/11 was recent.
Plot and plausibility hardly matter in this movie. Pandora can somehow interfere with satellites, making them crash on preselected points on the planet. The first one hits New York, apparently killing Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), the G-man with the burn scar on his face from the first two films in the series. No one can talk a load of crap, written in a script with the unlikelihood that a real person might communicate in such a flamboyant way, better than Samuel L. Jackson. He set that tone in Pulp Fiction a quarter of a century ago. He does it in Marvel movies as Nick Fury. I've decided he's having fun; seventy years old, playing a tough guy with a velvet tongue, unconcerned about playing cartoonish characters in between doing serious roles, more power to him.
That this film is preposterous should be obvious by now. My favorite set piece takes place on a huge cargo plane. A shootout ensues, the pilot takes a stray bullet to the head, the airplane goes into a parabola that looks more like a nosedive. The characters continue their fighting--Special Forces meatheads versus martial arts expert Xiang and Xander Cage--in a state of weightlessness. It's insane. It really looks like the actors and stuntmen performed this scene in a "Vomit Comet" type situation--the training undergone by astronauts before they go into space.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage made a shitload of money outside of the U.S. (where it didn't attract much attention). xXx4 began filming a month ago. Yeah!
I find slick entertaining movies fascinating because they don't require intellectual analysis. The surfaces in these films are great to look at, making them true escapism, something I am sometimes in the mood for when I've got too much going on in my life. Battle For the Planet of the Apes (fifth in the original series) is not a good movie but I'd watch it again for the entertainment value.
Some call these types of films "guilty pleasures." I understand the term but I don't feel guilty just because I like watching a Vin Diesel action movie now and then.
Vic Neptune
Comments
Post a Comment