Sep 14, 2004 12:47 PM
12962 Views
(Updated Sep 30, 2004 05:20 PM)
Arnold Swarzeneger has moved on with his new job. Bruce Willis is also seem to be at the end of his stint as an action Hero. Tom Cruise (cute action hero?!) :) is also getting older. At this time Hollywood needed a new Action Hero.
I think with XXX (Agent triple X: released in 2002) Vin Diesel has tried successfully to fulfill the gap. He did quite a good job in Fast & Furious too: Not a bad way to spend 10,000 bucks! he says after looking at the undercover cop's Mitsubishi & displays a khool/casual attitude typical of a boy-racer!! Fast & Furious did cater to the audience in the sense it was totally a different handling of the fast cars. XXX went further with establishing Vin Diesel as more mainstream sort of a actor but still in a very straightforward 'in your face' attitude.
I liked his casual attitude, confident appearance in XXX. Brenett, My favorite kidnapper!,You got to be kidding me. After jumping down the airplane he says 'hey, let's do that again. He was hilarious when he says '2 years?? how were you planning to kill them, by old age? For some reasons I couldn't stop laughing & had to go out of the theatre for a minute!
Some of the stunts are of course were a little exaggerated & at times hard to believe (trick) but they do posses an entertainment value due to the finesse they been presented (perfect score on technical point of view). At times however you can see a duplicate being used (of course, he is not going to jump like that through fire!).
The basic plot is tried & tested with hero being sent undercover who doesn't have a clue of whats going to happen to him. In this case XXX is almost made to go by threatening to send him to jail forever! He accepts the offer & is sent to Italy due to his widespread name due to the crazy things he has done etc.
The movie is blessed with a knock-out background music but it sorely misses a trade-mark tune like say 'Mission Impossible'. The movie opens with XXX stealing a car given to him by California senator & drives it off of a bridge into a deep valley with shooting going on with Vin Diesel's commentary: Hey senator, do you want to ban the wild video games..? hey that the only education we kids have..!. Special ops raid his house & arrest him, he again cracks people up with 'OK....I will turn down the volume..'
This movie is certainly has great entertainment value & I suggest everyone who loves action movies to check this out. You are sure to get close to 2 hrs of great entertainment.
XXX almost establishes Vin Diesel as an action hero. He did some small good roles like in 'Saving Private Ryan' but this movie belongs to him & him only. He is also different than the action heroes until now with respect to attitude & presentation. After Fast & Furious Vin Diesel makes sure the number of his fans will go up after this movie. I hope there are a few great action movies from him in future that are also classic like say 'Die Hard'.
Samuel L. Jackson always delivers & is one of the consistent actors in Hollywood. Here, he gives a controlled yet effective appearance that also gives a better gloss to VinD's role. It is because of SLJ's appearance we tend to like VinD more. One bad-axx has to be combined with one straigh-talking person to compliment.
Similarly like the james ond movie, XXX gets his own ''Q'' that arms him with fantastic weapons. Also XXX gets bad-axx American iron in the form of a 1970s Pontiac GTO. The goat has been launched recently with a Corvette's engine (GM owned Australian based manufaturer 'Holden') in a rear-drive platform. It doesn't have the retro-styling like Ford Thunderbird but has some really angry horses under the hood. Bob Lutz/Wagoner have promised a re-styled GTO soon.
I have heard some wild comments about this movie by some folks, although I respect their opinion, I really liked this bad-axx movie as it was different, it avoided the common wisdom & had a lot of aggressive stunts without any apologetic amendments to water them down. Go see it, you will either Love it or hate it !! :-)
