XXX: State of the Union: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

Early in Lee Tamahori's aggressively bad but wholly amusing "XXX: State of the Union," audiences learn the sad news that the original XXX, Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), has bit the big one in Bora Bora.

What did him in? A natural response might be that he got tripped up in that flashy pimp coat of his and broke his neck. Or perhaps he got poisoned by one too many XXX tattoos.

Whatever the reason, the producers are too bored to answer. Eager to pacify audiences while Diesel changed diapers in "The Pacifier," they have offered up a new XXX in Darius Stone, played here by Ice Cube in a role that's something of a departure from his recent "Barbershop" movies.

Taking a cue from Diesel, Cube plays the part of Stone as if the weight of the world rested on his face--and you can't blame him. According to Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), the National Security agent who recruits Stone to save the president of the United States (Peter Strauss) from certain death by his evil secretary of defense (Willem Dafoe), this new XXX must be more dangerous than the last XXX.

They've found that person in Stone, an imprisoned Navy SEAL who enjoys his own hip-hop soundtrack whenever he's onscreen and who holds the record for the highest dive in SEAL history--250 feet. Impressive? Absolutely. But then everything about Stone is impressive.

With panache, he breaks out of prison and into a tough world of fists, chop shops and guns. With bravado, he hijacks tanks, drives cars at 220 mph, and chases speeding trains without breaking a sweat.

During the course of the film, he even gets his former girlfriend, Lola (Nona Gaye), to put the bling back into his bang. She does so, too, in spite of the fact that Lola looks two implants away from being a man.

Still, it's all good, regardless of the fact that "State of the Union" was slammed by the majority of critics, who apparently wanted the movie to exist on a higher plane. Sorry, but they missed the point. This is video game moviemaking that doesn't want to be taken seriously, a parody of the action-espionage genre designed to offer reprehensible dialogue, impossible stunts, an air of absurdity. If done well, there's fun to be had in that. As such, there's fun to be had here.

Grade: B