The year is 2002 and as we await the rather dismal Die Another Day – Pierce Brosnan’s fourth and final turn as super spy James Bond – to make its bow in cinemas, the call has already been made to denounce 007 as an out of date has-been who has finally out of time. How can a privileged white dude in a tux possibly connect with the kids of 2000 as they mash their PlayStation buttons, glug down energy drinks and skateboard to the sounds of Queens Of The Stone Age and Hatebreed?
Simple answer? They fucking can’t, alright. But don’t worry, shaven-headed, tattoo-sporting salvation was on the way thanks to the director and star of The Fast And The Furious who chose to give us xXx for our sins. That’s right, why send an actual spy to save the world when an extreme sports professional with his own online channel can do it just as well while presumably not having an upper class stick up his ass the entire time? What could go wrong, right?
The world is in peril thanks to the Russian terrorist group known as Anarchy 99 who have just managed to lay their hands on a biochemical weapon ominously known as “Silent Night”. But while NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons sends in the usual breed of spy in to capture it back, their refined ways and immaculate tuxedos tend to make them stick out like a sore thumb when attempting to infiltrate things like a Rammstein concert and thus they all keep getting snuffed.
After the third agent in a row gets taken out with relative ease, Gibbons decides to fight greasy, tattooed fire with greasy tattooed fire and go the Armageddon route. If he can’t train a spy to blend in with alternative culture, he’ll get one of these extreme sports guys and groom them to be a spy.
Enter Xander Cage, the type of dude who will steal a senator’s Corvette, drive it off a bridge and surf it down before parachuting off it while being filmed for his fanatical fans and before you can say “Nick Fury”, Gibbons has manipulated him into passing a test to pull off this mission. Thankfully for the world in general, despite Cage’s brash, “fuck authority” style demeanor and his habit of saying stupid crap like “I live for this shit!” atva moments notice, he proves to be an exceptionally quick study and takes to the spy life fairly quick.
Infiltrating Anarchy 99 under the secret identity of… himself, he soon gets pally with Yorgi, the organisation’s devestation-hungry leader. But he gets even closer to Yelena, Yorgi’s lieutenant and girlfriend and soon uncovers a plot that involves Prague, poison gas and an experimental, water-based drone dubbed Ahab that he somehow has to thwart.
Can Cage manage to save the world while wearing possibly the world’s most unnecessary coat? Can he also do it while looking ludicrously cool? And can director Rob Cohen at the spry age of 52, be down with the kids enough to turn out another action flick that doesn’t patronise the younger generation into oblivion?
For all the hype and bombast that xXx was all set to be a Bond beater and that 007 was all but a finished, irrelevant relic, it’s actually rather hilarious that Ian Flemming’s vodka martini quaffing, bed hopping secret agent is still going strong and Vin Diesel didn’t even show up for the first sequel for a franchise he started. It’s even more ironic that the Fast And Furious franchise eventually evolved (or devolved, depending on who you ask) into its own superspy series that’s suspiciously similar to what xXx was supposed to be, the further it went along – but you have to give Diesel and Rob Cohen points for trying. Possibly the most 2002 movie that has ever existed, the biggest problem that xXx has is that for all of its bluster that James Bond had finally had it, it goes on to make a lot of the same mistakes that plagued that year’s 007 entry, the painfully vapid Die Another Day. Both ditch any sense of realism in order to deliver a wild extravaganza that at times feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon then any sort of grounded thriller and it’s boasts that it would be far more relevant now seem hilariously naive, especially in the face of what the Mission: Impossible and Jason Bourne franchises managed to achieve since.
As a result, time has be exceptionally cruel to almost every aspect of this movie that must have started dating exceptionally horribly around two weeks into its home video release. While it’s choice to take a direct shot at Bond by starting the movie with a clueless, out of his depth, white guy in a bow tie getting crowd surfed to death in an underground rave sets the statement of intent perfectly, almost everything that follows proves to be weirdly forgettable.
For a start, Xander Cage is basically just a slightly more reckless version of basically every other character that Vin Diesel has tried to milk a franchise out of and while smug confidence is usually a virtue in the superspy game, but when you twin it with moments where our gravelly hero rumbles out lines like “You’ve entered the Xander Zone!”, it turns out you’ve just got a more annoying Dominic Torretto on your hands. Elsewhere, Samuel L. Jackson shows up to rub some respectability onto matters, but not only does Gibbons feel like a half hearted dry run at the MCU’s Nick Fury, Jackson reads all his lines like he’s trying to bang out a voiceover for a video game cut screen in under a day. Still, at least he registers, because the villains sure don’t, with Marton Csokas’ shouty anarchist barely registering on the bastard-o-meter and Asia Argento’s female lead looking the part but only seemingly along for the ride. Still, at least we get cameos from Tony Hawk and Danny Trejo…
However, the real issue with xXx (apart from the fact that the title inevitably brings up porn on an Internet search), is that has no idea how to balance its “gnarly”, anti-establishment leanings in a way that don’t come across as weirdly childish. Some of the funky spy tech that gets whipped up for him looks so goofy they wouldn’t look out of place in a Spy Kids film and one shoulder mounted, heatseeking rocket launcher in particular looks like it should have a Fisher Price logo on the side. The stunts are admittedly cool and the explosions are fittingly humongous, but it all seems a bit sloppily edited, like the movie was thrown together in a bit of a rush and the filmmakers were hoping that the audience wouldn’t notice.
However, to give xXx its due, you do kind of get the feeling that if Xander Cage’s debut adventure hadn’t existed, the Fast And Furious franchise probably wouldn’t have progressively morphed into something incredibly similar as flying a car into space and using an automobile to perform judo moves on attack helicopters seems far more in Cage’s wheelhouse than Torretto’s. But the fact remains that for all it’s frantic pandering to a more hip audience, xXx remains a pale, sloppy, obnoxious pretender to a far more professional and refined foe. I mean, Bond’s had twenty five official entries to date, Diesel didn’t even turn up for the first sequel…
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