XXX 2: The Next Level
March 6th 2007 15:22
The first XXX set a new low intellectual benchmark for Hollywood. First off, it starred Vin Diesel – a man whose very name conjures up images of truck engines, steroids and testosterone. Casting Diesel as your leading man is essentially throwing in the towel to the vapid stupidity of today’s audiences; let’s face it, the only good thing the guy ever did was get shot in Saving Private Ryan. The film started with Xander Cage (played by the equally-ridiculously-named Diesel) stealing a senator’s sports car and driving it off a cliff before jumping off the back with a parachute. While listening to commercialised radio-friendly heavy metal. Why? Because this particular senator was lobbying against violence in videogames. Or something. It’s clearly not important. By the time you’d witnessed this much of the film, it was already too late – your IQ had already decreased by at least 5 points. Running from the cinema in a blind panic, you’re horrified to discover that you’ve suddenly started breathing through your mouth and dragging your knuckles along the pavement like some protein-deficient suburban chimpanzee, a look that goes well with your newfound penchant for overalls and pro wrestling…
Ahem. So, thanks to the ever-predictable Hollywood machine with their current hard-on for sequels and remakes, now we have this: “XXX 2 (XXXXXX?): THE NEXT LEVEL”. The next level of what, you may ask. I’m here to tell you they were referring to the sheer level of stupidity that emanates from the screen, which has been upgraded from the level of an 80’s Arnold Schwarzenegger film, to a veritable atomic bomb of dumbness. The next level of corny one-liners, of cheesy rap-rock soundtracks, of excuses to put rappers in action movies. The next level of cinematic stupidity. If you’ve seen XXX 1 you know this is a big call – imagine trying to get dumber than Vin Diesel snowboarding in front of an avalanche and using a silver food tray to skate down a handrail for no apparent reason. It ain’t easy.
This movie does not even pretend to be sensible. The first death is literally in the first 10 seconds of film. Some guy walks peacefully into a barn and finds a pile of corpses, just in time to be stabbed to death. Then things start exploding and people die all over the place, we’re talking death and explosions on a biblical scale, and before you really have any idea what’s going on, Samuel L. Jackson and some guy are driving away in a ’67 Mustang complete with missile launchers and chameleon paint – evidently, keeping a low profile. More things explode and then we’re introduced to Darius Stone (Ice Cube) – who has to be the new “Agent XXX” because Xander Cage is dead for no reason. Presumably, Darius was next in line because he has the second most ridiculous name on the planet. ‘Darius Stone’ – that’s what you’d call yourself if your mum let you change your name when you were twelve, but only if ‘Xander Cage’ and ‘Vin Diesel’ were taken.
Stone is an ex-Navy SEAL, locked up in a military prison for some reason. After staging a pointlessly extreme escape with Agent Gibbons (Jackson), Stone takes them back to his ‘hood, which seems to consist of a big garage which is in the ghetto yet full of inexplicably expensive cars, scantily-clad, confused-looking young ladies with wrenches, and rapper X-Zibit, whose role more or less consists of calling Darius ‘dawg’ and ‘homie’. Cue popular rap music playing at extreme volumes. A bunch of other stuff happens, which all end with Stone escaping ingeniously after blowing up a lot of things. It is eventually revealed that Stone and Gibbons must defeat a dangerous military splinter faction, led by an ex-General (Willem Dafoe) who wants to take over so he can push a George W. Bush style political agenda…and God knows we can’t let that happen.
Director Lee Tamahori was also at the helm of recent 007 outing ‘Die Another Day’, and it shows. Stone even tries his hand at secret agent-style undercover work, wearing a tuxedo no less, with skills that we can only assume he learned from ‘Top-Secret Espionage For Dummies’. Every expedition of this nature seems to end up with Stone, well, blowing up a lot of stuff and escaping in increasingly ‘extreme’ and improbable ways. Imagine you’re in a boat and your contact has to pick you up while you’re being chased by approximately 50000 guys with machine guns. Any normal guy would probably pull over to the side of the river and get out of the boat. But Darius Stone takes things TO THE NEXT LEVEL, specifically, uses his magical powers to drive the boat up a conveniently-angled docking crane and jumps onto an overhead bridge, crushing a police car to smithereens and then driving away casually into the sunset with a dryly witty one-liner to top it all off. Pure cinematic gold.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that made me laugh as much as XXX 2: The Next Level. It seems that the dumb action movie is a lost art; not since the heady 80’s days of ‘Missing In Action’, ‘Rambo II’ and ‘Commando’ (my personal nomination for the “Best Damn One-Liners Of All Time” award) have we seen such blatant celluloid masturbation, manly movies that make no excuses for being dumb as a bag of hammers. It’s good to see a director realise that pretentious intellectual stuff like plotlines and credibility just gets in the way of things exploding. In 10 years’ time, teenagers will be sitting around drinking beer and laughing their asses off at this retarded excuse for a movie. That’s the stuff classics are made of. This movie is sheer brilliance, brilliance of the dumb kind that is…any connoisseur of the stupid action movie will find it absolutely priceless and shouldn’t miss it for the world. I just can’t wait for XXX 3 – seeing them top this one will be interesting to say the least. 10/10
Ahem. So, thanks to the ever-predictable Hollywood machine with their current hard-on for sequels and remakes, now we have this: “XXX 2 (XXXXXX?): THE NEXT LEVEL”. The next level of what, you may ask. I’m here to tell you they were referring to the sheer level of stupidity that emanates from the screen, which has been upgraded from the level of an 80’s Arnold Schwarzenegger film, to a veritable atomic bomb of dumbness. The next level of corny one-liners, of cheesy rap-rock soundtracks, of excuses to put rappers in action movies. The next level of cinematic stupidity. If you’ve seen XXX 1 you know this is a big call – imagine trying to get dumber than Vin Diesel snowboarding in front of an avalanche and using a silver food tray to skate down a handrail for no apparent reason. It ain’t easy.
This movie does not even pretend to be sensible. The first death is literally in the first 10 seconds of film. Some guy walks peacefully into a barn and finds a pile of corpses, just in time to be stabbed to death. Then things start exploding and people die all over the place, we’re talking death and explosions on a biblical scale, and before you really have any idea what’s going on, Samuel L. Jackson and some guy are driving away in a ’67 Mustang complete with missile launchers and chameleon paint – evidently, keeping a low profile. More things explode and then we’re introduced to Darius Stone (Ice Cube) – who has to be the new “Agent XXX” because Xander Cage is dead for no reason. Presumably, Darius was next in line because he has the second most ridiculous name on the planet. ‘Darius Stone’ – that’s what you’d call yourself if your mum let you change your name when you were twelve, but only if ‘Xander Cage’ and ‘Vin Diesel’ were taken.
Stone is an ex-Navy SEAL, locked up in a military prison for some reason. After staging a pointlessly extreme escape with Agent Gibbons (Jackson), Stone takes them back to his ‘hood, which seems to consist of a big garage which is in the ghetto yet full of inexplicably expensive cars, scantily-clad, confused-looking young ladies with wrenches, and rapper X-Zibit, whose role more or less consists of calling Darius ‘dawg’ and ‘homie’. Cue popular rap music playing at extreme volumes. A bunch of other stuff happens, which all end with Stone escaping ingeniously after blowing up a lot of things. It is eventually revealed that Stone and Gibbons must defeat a dangerous military splinter faction, led by an ex-General (Willem Dafoe) who wants to take over so he can push a George W. Bush style political agenda…and God knows we can’t let that happen.
Director Lee Tamahori was also at the helm of recent 007 outing ‘Die Another Day’, and it shows. Stone even tries his hand at secret agent-style undercover work, wearing a tuxedo no less, with skills that we can only assume he learned from ‘Top-Secret Espionage For Dummies’. Every expedition of this nature seems to end up with Stone, well, blowing up a lot of stuff and escaping in increasingly ‘extreme’ and improbable ways. Imagine you’re in a boat and your contact has to pick you up while you’re being chased by approximately 50000 guys with machine guns. Any normal guy would probably pull over to the side of the river and get out of the boat. But Darius Stone takes things TO THE NEXT LEVEL, specifically, uses his magical powers to drive the boat up a conveniently-angled docking crane and jumps onto an overhead bridge, crushing a police car to smithereens and then driving away casually into the sunset with a dryly witty one-liner to top it all off. Pure cinematic gold.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that made me laugh as much as XXX 2: The Next Level. It seems that the dumb action movie is a lost art; not since the heady 80’s days of ‘Missing In Action’, ‘Rambo II’ and ‘Commando’ (my personal nomination for the “Best Damn One-Liners Of All Time” award) have we seen such blatant celluloid masturbation, manly movies that make no excuses for being dumb as a bag of hammers. It’s good to see a director realise that pretentious intellectual stuff like plotlines and credibility just gets in the way of things exploding. In 10 years’ time, teenagers will be sitting around drinking beer and laughing their asses off at this retarded excuse for a movie. That’s the stuff classics are made of. This movie is sheer brilliance, brilliance of the dumb kind that is…any connoisseur of the stupid action movie will find it absolutely priceless and shouldn’t miss it for the world. I just can’t wait for XXX 3 – seeing them top this one will be interesting to say the least. 10/10
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Comment by Adam Sutcliffe
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Whats the Normal Penis Size?
this skull duggery drove me nuts - i don't mind Diesel in some roles - but this was a shocker.
nice article.
Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
Take care,
Nick