Poor Sony Pictures. When legal action prevented them from getting hold of distribution rights to Eon Production's long running and highly successful James Bond franchise back in the nineties they endeavored to forge their own globetrotting spy franchise in 2002 with xXx. Sony's twist on the spy genre concept was to have the inverse of Bond, so instead of a high class government trainer agent you got an streetwise, rebellious, anti-authority type who could infiltrate all those scuzzy down and dirty organisations the tuxedo wearing Bond could not.
Hiring the lava hot double act of director Rob Cohen and star Vin Diesel (fresh off of mega hit The Fast And The Furious) Sony pooped out a stunningly average action flick that seldom competed with the franchise they hoped to compete with. There's nothing particularly bad about xXx but there's little that's exceptional either. Rob Cohen is a hack, plain and simple, and what visual flair he has seems forced rather than a natural outcome of the storytelling. Vin Diesel too feels like he's coasting through proceedings, with his character lacking the super charged levels of 'fuck you' the xXx premise promised. Also, for a grand scale action flick most of the set pieces fall flat, despite some impressive stunt work on display.
But there are glimmers of genius. The rock soundtrack (including Rammstein, Queens Of The Stone Age and Drowning Pool) amps up the attitude, composer Randy Edelman delivers a strong spy moteif to accompany the heroics, Sam Jackson struts his stuff as NSA boss Gibbons and the final boat/car chase to defuse the end-of-the-world-Armageddon-device is the one action sequence that truly delivers in terms of thrills, pacing, stunts, emotion and gadgets. Best of all is leading lady Asia Argento whose performance as undercover Russian agent is perhaps the very essence and definition of the word slut. You many not take much away from the limp xXx, but the sultry sluttiness of Argento's Eastern European vixen is certainly one of them.
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