So, my wife and I were in the mood for some mindless entertainment, and we hadn’t seen xXx yet. It has Samuel Jackson in it, and some people I know liked it, so I decided to give it a shot. Having watched it, I can only say, what a waste of celluloid this movie was.
A collection of extreme sports and stunts that are a complete break with reality. A story that isn’t anywhere close to interesting. A plot that exists only as an excuse (and a thin one at that) for the aforementioned extreme sports events.
And I have to apologize to Vin Diesel fans here, but while I see that he has a certain rugged, brutish, muscular charm, he’s an abysmal actor. He delivers his lines with one or two stock expressions and almost no inflection. And the way he kisses just looks nasty. Yuch.
This is a film that doesn’t even succeed on the level of gut-level, mindless entertainment – it’s that stupid. It’s silly, inconsistent, and superficial, and worst of all it isn’t even fun. I got it as a free rental, so all I can really complain about is the time spent watching it, but dammit I even want that back!
I’m disappointed that a film like this can’t even manage to be entertaining. I’m disappointed that Sam Jackson would agree to be in such a stinker. But most of all, I’m disappointed in myself for even wasting the time to watch it.
Blah. I need to go watch something else – anything – to get the nasty feel of that one out. Later.
I read a review of it on the Brunching Shuttlecocks website a while back that started out by saying it was a stupid movie. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was stupid.
I tried to approach it with that in mind. The fact that a movie is stupid doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t like it. Sometimes it’s a plus. I’m all for the mindless blow up lots of stuff and have cool music school of moviemaking. Some of my favourite movies are amazingly stupid and involve more stunt people than actors.
This one didn’t do it for me.
Vin Diesel has potential. I’m not just saying that because he stole my hairstyle and he’s way hot. Find a copy of “Pitch Black” and ignore the ending. He was good in that. Okay, he was good the way Ahnold was in The Terminator, but he was still good.
Jackson was good too, but I can only assume that his agent was on serious drugs when he passed the script on and Sam didn’t actually read it before he signed up.
Well, the first scene, where they run into a concert by Rammstein, was impressive. Actually, I guess Rammstein was impressive. Nice sets, a few nice props, visually speaking, the casting was pretty good.
I’m not planning on wasting my time with it, but I’m curious. Was it worse than Collateral Damage? I turned that one off half-way through it (once I witnessed John Turturo’s bit role–what was he doing in that movie??).
Reign of Fire was definitely bad… but I don’t know if it was worse. At least that one had dragons, which are a plus in my book.
irishgirl, the pole-dancing girl in Vin’s bedroom was one of the reasons I decided to rant about it. She may have been sexy (not to me, but YMMV on that), but that was one of the stupidest, most transparent excuses for on-screen cheesecake I’ve ever seen. An insult to the intelligence and a play to juvenile male fantasy if ever I’ve seen one.
The avalanche scene was another one of my big problems. What absolute idiocy.
plastic conspiracy, I’ve not seen Collateral Damage. Nor do I plan to, if it’s anywhere near as bad as xXx.
I think I need to find the people who recommended xXx to me, tie them down, and make them watch something either really bad (Druids, for example) or really good (Fearless or Fight Club maybe). I can’t decide which now.
xXx was, indeed, pretty bad, but I still enjoyed it as a brainless action flick.
I don’t think Vin is a bad actor at all (although he’s no Olivier by any stretch), but this was probably his worst effort.
I actually shuddered at the stupidity of the heat seeking rocket scene.
I liked the bad guy, and the little Russian girl was a visually tasty morsel. Besides, it had one of the most beautiful GTOs in it I have ever seen. It’s my second most beloved car; so it was worth it to me just for that.
“Stop thinking like Prague police and start thinking PlayStation. Blow shit up.”
I have to say I liked it. It was definitely brainless, had a ludicrous plot and the actiing isn’t going to win an Oscar any time soon but, it was still a very well made popcorn action movie imho.
These kind of movies, if they are well made, can be just as entertaining as more serious films. For the record I also liked The Rock, Con Air, Charlies Angels, Lethal Weapon and Die Hard which pretty much fall into the same category of brainless but fun movies.
Biggest plus point for me is that it was a hell of a lot better than Die Another Day which I saw at roughly the same time.
See, that’s the thing… I liked all those movies you mention above as well, particularly Die Hard. That’s pretty much all I was hoping for with xXx too, but for some reason it just didn’t appeal to me on the same level. I rented it because I wanted a brainless action flick, what I got was just… brainless.
Oh well. We watched Storytelling the next night, and even if it was sort of weird, it was still a much better movie. I feel much better now.
I’ve sworn off Bond films for a long time now. I don’t even remember the last one I watched.
I thought it was near perfect. Dirt bikes, snowboards, skating, explosions up the ying yang, decent women, cheesy & implausable stunts. What more could you ask for in a mindless action movie? It was like Bond without all the snootiness and debonaire crapolla.
What did the trailers mislead you into thinking you were going to see?
Seen it… liked the first half, and thought Jeremy Irons was perfect for Gruber’s brother. The second half (pretty much starting at the point when Brucie gets shot out of a waterpipe) was idiocy, but it was still a fun movie.
Rug Burn, maybe something approximating a plot would’ve been nice. Or maybe my standards are too high.