XXX

Dear, dear me. Yes, I know that it's supposed to be a fun no-brainer and I didn't expect anything else - but even I, a dedicated fan of Jackie Chan, could find very little to interest me here. Apart from a well-produced (and gloriously over-the-top) chase sequence in which Vin Diesel twists his motorbike in mid air to squeeze through a narrow gap in a barb wire fence - thirty feet above ground - before driving off the roof of a building that explodes behind him, there was nothing that was engaging, or fun, or exciting. It didn't help that it was far too loud (excessively so even for this type of picture - I think I shall write and complain) as well as suffering from an appalling sound mix that was too top heavy.

Even without the sound complaints, XXX suffers from being sterile and flat: MTV does James Bond, but with none of the wit or panache. Diesel, always watchable even when saddled with bad writing, looks nonetheless uncomfortable here - restrained, even frustrated, itching to do more. Samuel L. Jackson's disfigured military officer is wasted: a character who is never explained or explored properly (and one that you feel should be, somehow). Most of the action was impressively handled and I can overlook the frankly ridiculous use of technology (binoculars that can see through walls in crystal-clear detail), and the patchy script with some ludicrous dialogue ("Remember when we kissed? And I said never again? I lied").

But at the end of the day, an action movie needs to provide an interesting, end-of-the-world plot to be truly engaging, and the central problem with XXX is that not only does it take far too long to get even a hint of what's going on, but when I did eventually find out I found myself sympathising with the terrorists. Sure, the leader is a standard Bond-style nutcase, but it's hard not to feel he has just cause in his (admittedly demonic) pursuits. The film played out like a video game (one suspects that it would be a significant improvement upon its celluloid counterpart) and its saving grace was that the bulk of it was shot in Prague - so I sat there throughout watching the screen, gazing at establishing shots and thinking "Been there...been there...been there..."

(Monday, 4th November 2002)