Note to Parents: Don't worry about letting your kids watch XXX. It has Hollywood's Seal of Approval for Kids--a few hundred gruesome murders, but no breasts.
Plot Summary: XXX is the story of Vin Diesel, car thief/skateboarder turned international secret agent. Kind of like Arnold Schwartzenegger meets Bill and Ted meets Austin Powers, but less believable.
The DVD: The DVD managed to suck before the disc menu came up, trapping the helpless viewer to some seventeen (subjective) minutes of XXX graphics accompanied by a soundtrack that sounds like my seven-month-old hammering on my synth. Eventually, we can escape into the movie itself--definitely a "frying pan into the fire" arrangement.
The Story: XXX opens with a tuxedo-clad secret agent running from vicious killers. He flees into a giant flaming Czechoslovakian mosh pit, filled with scantily clad Czech chicks writhing to the musical wailings of a German, fire-breathing band, crooning a song that might have been foleyed in using a recording of a train wreck, but without the subtle harmonies. Our hapless agent has unfortunately blundered into the headquarters of "Anarchy 99," the KAOS of the twenty-first century, where he is gunned down and thus spared hearing any more of The Bald Aryan Fire Breathers.
Cut to the National Security Agency, which looks much like the bridge of the Enterprise, but with higher technology. (I've actually been inside some NSA facilities; they had about the same level of technology as my 1960s grade school.) At the NSA, Jedi Knight Samuel L. Jackson has decided that agents with years of training are unsuited to the task of Extreme Espionage, and decides they need agents with more tattoos.
Enter Vin Diesel, aka Alexander Cage--"Xander Cage" for short, "XXX" for shorter, or "X" to his memory-challenged friends. X is in the process of Grand Theft Auto, wherein he steals a new Corvette and drives it off a bridge, surfing it down before parachuting to safety. Director Rob Cohen used forty-seven cameras for cover on this shot, and by god, we got to watch all of them. In slow motion, no less. It took that 'Vette longer to fall than the Roman Empire.
X returns to his pad of skateboarders and writhing nubile chicks where screenwriter Rich Wilkes shows how hep he is with dialog like:
"Yo! Yo! Yo!"
"Word!"
and "That's my dog!"
Well, before you can say, "Zoom in on those girls in the back," the U.S. Special Forces leap through the windows and shoot X with a dart gun.
X awakes in a diner, which turns out to be the NSA's version of the SATs. X figures out the test because (as he puts it) the NSA's players' "performances were terrible." Odd line, coming from him.
Convinced this man has the Right Stuff, they shoot him with another dart and ship him off to the cocaine fields of Columbia. (Don't ask me; I just watch this stuff.) X manages to escape from acne-scarred drug lords and the Columbian Army (is that redundant?) by use of a Flubber-powered motorcycle that leaps a thirty-foot fence, a forty-foot guard tower, and a gigantic barn filled with South America's entire supply of TNT.
Now ready for the Big Time, Jedi Jackson ships X off to Prague to hunt down Anarchy 99. First, he gets outfitted by the NSA's chief geek, a cross between James Bond's Q and Bud Bundy. X acquires a gun that shoots those pesky darts and a pair of binoculars with special magic lenses that enables to see through women's clothes.
Thus armed, X finds his quarry in yet another club filled with writhing nubile babes. (Forget Club Med or the Riviera--the Czech Republic is the booty ranch!) He infiltrates Anarchy 99 by buying nine stolen Ferraris and a 1967 Pontiac from their leader, Yorgi (unfortunately, not Steve Martin's Czech Brother from Saturday Night Live).
Now "one of the gang," X rides along to Anarchy HQ: a magnificent old castle featuring a rotunda filled with priceless sculptures, beautiful statues, and thong-clad teenage girls. Much like the Capitol Building during the Clinton presidency. After some needlessly off-screen sex, X learns that Yorgi's right-hand chick, Yelena, is actually a Russian spy. Meanwhile, Yorgi discovers X's true identity and orders him killed, but the multi-talented X escapes thanks to his skateboarding skills.
X returns to the Castle o' Thongs to rescue Yelena. Using his magic binocs, he discovers Anarchy 99's demonic plan: to destroy the world's capitals by biological warfare, utilizing rockets launched from an autonomous, solar-powered submarine. (Yeah, that's what I thought, too.)
X is discovered, but escapes once more via another Flubber-powered motorcycle. In the movie's most stirring moment, X flies his motorcycle high above the Czech Republic, leaps off the seat, and while hanging onto the back of the bike with one hand, accurately picks off Anarchy's guards with his handgun before climbing back into the saddle. Now that's shooting!
At this point, Jedi Jackson promotes X to head of the NSA's tactical combat team, and the tattooed warrior comes up with a plan to take the castle by force. The key is knocking out a communications tower near the castle. Borrowing a page from General Schwartzkopf's playbook, X straps on his snowboard and parachutes out of an airplane. After doing some aerobatics and slamming a couple of Mountain Dews, he lands at the mountain's peak and begins some extreme boarding. He cleverly sets off some charges along the way so the ensuing avalanche at his heels will inspire him to ski faster. He reaches the tower and leaps onto it, just ahead of a trillion tons of rampaging ice. Ice which destroys a concrete bunker but leaves the spindly aluminum tower (and X, unfortunately) intact.
Seems to me an airstrike might have been easier.
Anyway, X and the combined entire European NATO and Interpol forces attack the castle, killing everyone but allowing the Radio Shack sub o' death to escape. In another subdued chase scene--involving a GTO with more armament than an AC130 gunship, a parasail, two "MIG-21s," and a potato cart--X reaches the sub and destroys it while shouting "Welcome to the Xander Zone!" Clint Eastwood, eat your heart out.
The sub explodes and everyone watching the movie who's under the age of zero no doubt thinks Xander has been killed. But huzzah!, X has survived! He gets the girl, a big paycheck, and the script for XXX 2 (or XXXX, or XXXII, whatever).
Performances: In XXX, Vin Diesel plays an obnoxious, arrogant criminal. This was something of a stretch for him, since in his previous movies he portrayed obnoxious, arrogant criminals with different names. This time, however, he got to show off his dramatic skills by clenching his jaw.
I did rather like Marton Csokas as bad-guy Yorgi. And Asia Argento (Yelena) has a Winona Ryder look going I also rather like (and her thigh-high, spiked-heel boots have nothing to do with it).
Director Rob Cohen was a breath of fresh air. I'm sick of movies by video music directors who try to go mainstream. This time I got to witness a mainstream director try to do a 2 hour music video.
And writer Rich Wilkes has another masterpiece to add to Airheads, The Stoned Age, and The Jerky Boys.
The vacuums just keep coming.