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xXx2: The Next Level
It would be quite possible to make this sequel to the Vin Diesel no-brainer sound fun... even cool. For a start, the big Vin isn't even in it (he's been killed in Bora Bora, we're told). Then, this is an action movie in which America is at war with itself. President Peter Strauss is about to announce sweeping cuts in military spending, with a view to redirecting the money into international aid and 'turning our enemies into our allies'. Heard that one before? Needless to say, Secretary of Defense Willem Dafoe has other ideas, and plans to stage a coup (a bit too French for the target audience, it's called a 'revolution' here), fingering Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) and his team of covert ops as the fall-guys. Big mistake. He reckons without Darius Stone (Ice Cube), the new xXx, who leaps into the breech with his old car-jacking homeys. 'The fate of the free world is in the hands of a bunch of hustlers and thieves,' he says. 'Why should tonight be any different?' 
I guarantee the movie playing in your head right now is smarter, funnier and way more exciting than the lame, sloppy dud served up by director Lee Tamahori and his team. A Kiwi, he made the gritty drama Once Were Warriors. Then, Tamahori goes to Hollywood - with variable results. On the plus side: The Edge and Along Came a Spider. On the debit: Mulholland Falls. But the movie which clearly landed him this job was Die Another Day. Can the triple X franchise become an extreme American 007 as the producers hope? I'm afraid they're going to have to raise their game across the board - starting with the casting of xXx himself. Ice Cube is a perfectly capable actor, but he's no action hero. In his most credible scenes he's got a burger between his chops. Stocky and squat, he's a meatball of a man. Asked to perform a few karate moves, sprint over a rooftop and dive for a helicopter, even his stunt-double looks ridiculous. 
Tamahori's solution to this self-imposed problem is to push the movie into CGI overdrive for the action scenes, throwing the laws of physics out the window, and suspense right along with them. OTT can work if the movie's not taking itself too seriously, but this effort is too lunkhead to be playful. It doesn't even bother to make any sense on its own terms. As a moviegoer, I find that insulting, but if they'd given me some style and some smiles I'd have gotten over it. Where's Jerry Bruckheimer when you need him? Tom Charity 
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