Film Review: XXX (2002, Rob Cohen)

Stars: XXX of 5.
Running Time: 124 minutes.

Tag-line: "A New Breed of Secret Agent."

Notable Cast or Crew: Starring Vin Diesel (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, PITCH BLACK), Asia Argento (LAND OF THE DEAD, TRAUMA), Marton Csokas (THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS), Samuel L. Jackson (PULP FICTION, UNBREAKABLE), Danny Trejo (DESPERADO, MACHETE), Thomas Ian Griffith (VAMPIRES, BEHIND ENEMY LINES), Eve (BARBERSHOP, THE WOODSMAN), and Tony Hawk.  Music by Randy Edelman (KINDERGARTEN COP, GHOSTBUSTERS II).  A soundtrack featuring Rammstein, Drowning Pool, Hatebreed, Joi, Flaw, Orbital, Mushroomhead, N.E.R.D., and other 90s bands you may have forgotten.

Best One-liner:  "Welcome to the Xander Zone."

The bastard child of James Bond and the X-treme sports fad, I had long avoided XXX, largely because it was not made during the 1980s, the golden period of cheesy action.  How foolish I was!  For a movie named after Vin Diesel's (fictional) tattoo and featuring a gang of villains named Anarchy 99, it is surprisingly palatable.

 I have no idea if I would have liked this as much if I'd seen it when it came out in 2002, but XXX has aged like a fine wine.  Or at least like a wine in comic strip that's served in a bottle marked "XXX."

From the director of THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, DRAGONHEART, and DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (Rob Cohen, the man who directs movies with the word 'Dragon' in the title more often than any comparable director), XXX is a spectacular undercover glimpse into the exclusive world of Eurotrash rave culture and high-level secret government operations.  Here are eight things I liked about it:

#1.  Asia Argento.

Cult, horror, and Italo-trash legend, she's essentially why I decided to watch this in the first place.  And yet this was her first foray into a major Hollywood film.  Why 2002?  Why XXX?  I figured it out: it's not that Asia had to wait around for Hollywood to find a trashy role; Hollywood had to wait until Asia decided they'd come up with a movie trashy enough to meet her rigorous trash standards.

Here she is, pretending to dance, on all the drugs.

Throughout, she maintains a consistency of performance, even (especially?) when her scene partner is the impressively wooden and hilariously flat Vin Diesel.

Don't scowl, Asia––he's still better than most of the cast of DRACULA 3D.

She's technically the "Bond girl," but in a movie this trashy, I say she's the star.


#2.  I mean, the opening scene is a Rammstein concert in a Euro-cathedral, where a man is assassinated and then crowd-surfed amid gouts of flame and other pyrotechnics.


They shot James Bond?

Later, there are more raves and tesla coils and techno music.

This picture could not exist without the subtitle "Techno Music Playing."

And cranberry club sodas.

Er, what––

#3.  Let's take a moment to talk about Vin Diesel and that wondrous jacket, shall we?

Yes, that furry-collared jacket (complete with a stylishly gaudy medallion) appears in roughly an entire third of the film, which leads me to believe they thought it was quite the trendy fashion statement.  It's nearly as great as Kramer's in that one SEINFELD episode where he's mistaken for a pimp.

Highest marks.  But who is Vin Diesel's Xander "xXx" Cage?"  Who is he really?  What makes him tick, besides cranberry sodas and furry collars and stilted line readings?

#4.  xXx is a crusading everyman.  He talks straight into little video cameras (addressing the nation?) and makes confessional rants about "The Man" and video games and explicit song lyrics.   He is an iconoclast, a man of letters, a philosopher.

But when it comes to solving problems, where Plato used the Socratic method, xXx uses... X-treme sports.  In fact, you could say that is the main thrust of the film is the use of X-treme sports to solve matters of international diplomacy and intrigue.

Whether it's X-treme Dirtbiking:

Thank God there happened to be an offroad crotchrocket lying around.

X-treme Rockclimbing:

"Get a grip!"

X-treme Para-snowboarding:


X-treme Regular Snowboarding:

"Nothing like fresh powder!" –an actual line in this sequence

X-treme Para-sailing:


And, my personal favorite, X-Treme Silver Platter:

which leads to X-Treme Silver Platter-Skateboarding:

Pictured: a typical European street scene.

And yet all of these personality traits make the following even more satisfying (albeit briefly):


#4.  Danny Trejo, with a machete, torturing Vin Diesel.

This is the sort of thing that's worth the price of admission, even if it only lasts for two minutes.  And look at Danny Trejo, boldly transitioning from "Prisoner" to "Guy with Machete."  But, oh, he does it well.


#5.  Potato Explosion!  This is the best potato-related car chase sequence explosion since the one in PET SEMATARY TWO.



"Now that's what I call a 'tater crater.'"  –not my proudest moment


#6.  Facial-scarred Sam Jackson phoning in––nay, mailing in––a performance as the 'M' of this universe, comparing Mr. Diesel to a snake


Technically, in this context, said 'snake' would be on a plane––and four years before they made the movie!

and delivering a hearty (and self-referential?) slow clap when Vin Diesel does what he didn't in PULP FICTION––kick the asses of some stick-up artists in a retro diner:

Not quite as good as the slow clap in ROCKY IV.

#7.  And continuing with the James Bond analogy, there's also a 'Q' scene, with all the requisite gadgets.  Though, when Vin Diesel tries out the X-ray binoculars,

it bears mentioning that he briefly becomes XXX: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES.

#8.  The Xander Zone.

I think this is a good note to end on.  Amen.

–Sean Gill

Film Review: LICENCE TO KILL (1989, John Glen)

Stars: 3.8 of 5.
Running Time: 133 minutes.

Tag-line: "His bad side is a dangerous place to be."

Notable Cast or Crew:  Timothy Dalton (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, HOT FUZZ), Carey Lowell (DOWN TWISTED, DANGEROUSLY CLOSE), Robert Davi (DIE HARD, THE GOONIES), Talisa Soto (Kitana in MORTAL KOMBAT and MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION), Anthony Zerbe (THE DEAD ZONE, STEEL DAWN), Frank McRae (LAST ACTION HERO, 48 HRS.), Wayne Newton (TALES FROM THE CRYPT), Benicio Del Toro (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS), Everett McGill (TWIN PEAKS, SILVER BULLET, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS), Desmond Llewelyn ('Q' from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE through THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, from 1963 to 1999), Grand L. Bush (LETHAL WEAPON, DIE HARD).  Music by Michael Kamen (LETHAL WEAPON, DIE HARD).

Best One-liner:  "God, what a terrible waste... of money."

LICENCE TO KILL might be the meanest of all the Bond films, feeling at times more like a DEATH WISH sequel or a spin-off of SCARFACE.  It's by no means a top-tier James Bond film, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.  The plot is thus: after his longtime CIA buddy Felix Leiter becomes mutilated and widower'ed on his honeymoon, Bond goes rogue, has his license to kill revoked, and hunts down the drug lord (classic 80s character actor villain Robert Davi) responsible.  As I said, it's quite mean-spirited, and is chock full of severed limbs, non-consensual BDSM, exploding heads, torture, and all sorts of other stuff you wouldn't expect in a Bond film.  There was a gung ho wave of anti-drug paramilitary-ism in the late 80s and early 90s with so many franchises turning in a cartel-related installment:  DEATH WISH gave us DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, DIRTY HARRY gave us THE DEAD POOL, DELTA FORCE gave us DELTA FORCE 2: THE COLUMBIAN CONNECTION, the Jack Ryan series gave us CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, and the James Bond series gave us LICENCE TO KILL.  I could go on.

Now, what about those beloved minutiae– the strange little happenings and unexpected appearances that make 80s action movies so enjoyable for me?   Well, here are my top nine such moments in LICENCE TO KILL:

#9.  Ninjas fly down from the rafters and start shooting nets out of their sleeves like Spiderman slings web.



No, this isn't a Cannon Film, and no, they don't appear in any other scene.

#8.  Q's finest gadget by far in this film (compare to his last great offering, "The Ghetto Blaster" in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS) is a Polaroid camera that conceals a death-ray laser-beam.

PEW!

#7.  This random guy, whose explanation for a cartel torture-by-shark is to blame it on cartel torture-by-chainsaw.  He begins speculating to Timothy Dalton and Frank McRae about how much Columbians use chainsaws.

Then he says that they use them even more than people from Oregon.

What?  How is that a valid comparison?  Is it a logging industry reference?  Columbia and Oregon both possess a great deal of forest, though Columbia has four times the square milage of Oregon.  And if you were to pick a U.S. state that people associate with chainsaws, it'd probably be Texas.  Oh, nevermind– I get it.  It must be a handcrafted-artisanal-chainsaw-sculpture reference.

#6.  Wayne Newton as a preening televangelist cult leader.

He pulls it off wonderfully; it's no sort of stretch whatsoever.

#5.  Evil Everett McGill.

While I love "Good Everett McGill," as best depicted in "Big Ed" from TWIN PEAKS, I must say that I have a soft spot for "Evil Everett McGill," particularly as seen in SILVER BULLET and THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS. Here, we get the Evil variety, and while he only has about five minutes of screen time before he is voraciously eaten by sharks, it's a fine showing.


#4.  Guest-directed by Lucio Fulci?  A man has maggots thrown in his face,

 and Bond nearly meets some eye trauma at the business end of a wall-mounted swordfish.


You will note that I just basically described every Lucio Fulci film.

#3.  Even in 1989, the "80s Rule of Pools" is still in effect.  I've written about this elsewhere, but the idea is that if A., a swimming pool exists, then B., someone fully clothed must be pushed into it, arms flailing.

It's simply the 80s Rule of Pools, Mr. Bond.

#2.  Benicio Del Toro.  Fresh off his first film appearance as "Duke the Dog-Faced Boy" in BIG-TOP PEE WEE, Del Toro really sinks his teeth into "Dario," a lesser cartel henchman.

For whatever reason, I think he's wearing the same black blazer and red shirt he wears six years later in THE USUAL SUSPECTS:

though by 1995, he no longer looks as much like a member of Menudo, which is a shame in its own right.

#1.  Robert Davi (and his pet Iguana).

 

I don't have much to add here, other than to point out the Iguana is wearing a diamond choker.  Davi acts throughout as if he's in a hard-R-rated drug war flick and not a mass-market James Bond movie, and his frightening presence comprises much of what makes this film so memorable.  It's probably also why this film created the largest gap (it would be six years until Bond returned in GOLDENEYE) in the Bond franchise since its inception!

–Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me... THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS

Only now does it occur to me... that 'Q' probably never invented anything more spectacular than "the ghetto blaster," a boombox that doubles as a bazooka:
 


It's also possible that Timothy Dalton might be the smarmiest Bond yet
 
 (a bold claim that I'm not yet willing to fully endorse).

And the fact remains that A-ha's title theme song can't touch Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill," though I suppose we can take solace in the consolation prize that is arms dealer and secondary villain Joe Don Baker, who has a wax museum of history's most notable conquerors.

Carry on then, boys.