Diesel probably got a little too expensive for the mileage.
And maybe the producers wanted something cooler for the summer.
So they got Ice Cube!
Ice Cube as xXx-2 is exactly the opposite of what Vin Diesel was.
He’s not “some biker skateboarder boy” as someone refers to him in the sequel. Darius Stone (Ice Cube) is “more dangerous” than Xander (Vin Diesel) and “more attitude,” as Gibbons (Samuel L Jackson) tells us. And, he uses his head unlike the other guy, as Stone says so himself.
Attitude, hell yes!
“I want you to be the new xXx,” says Gibbons. “xXx? Sounds like a pornstar,” says Stone.
When xXx was conceived the producers wanted to create a hero cooler than James Bond, someone the younger audiences can relate to. A hero who was contemporary. Going by that, they have succeeded in creating a hero who American youth will find cool.
Come on, Ice Cube is part of mainstream pop culture in America. He’s a rap star and has written songs that go Fuck Tha Police, Gangsta Gangsta and Death Certificate. Yanks like that kinda shit.
And it’s 100 per cent idiot-savvy American, as in it does not disturb your brain cells.
The story can be written at the back of an ice cube, because a few minutes into the movie, you can see it disappear.
After an attack on the National Security Agency, Gibbons realizes he needs a new trustworthy old hand, summons Ice Cube, who is in jail for assaulting George Deckert (Willem Dafoe) the man who is now Secretary of Defense, and attempting to pull of the first coup in the history of America.
So Captain Vijayakanth style, Stone walks into a black neighbourhood for help, gets the ‘brothers’ together and head towards the White House, with some rap hip hop music in the background score. (And when my hero Captain Vijayakanth does this in his movies, you boo! Fuck you!)
“Welcome to the first tank-jack ever in history,” he says as they take control and go all guns blazing in the White House, which is out of power supply currently, after Deckert pulls the plug!
If that’s not funny enough, Deckert takes the President hostage on an underground Presidential bullet train with Stone chasing in a car that the producers saved up from The Fast and The Furious.
It is a fast-paced mindless entertainer no doubt, if you can digest the corniest of lines. It is a brilliant action movie, if you leave the cinema out of it, that is.
And its got Nona Gaye with the biggest knocks I’ve seen in a PG 13 movie!
The downside: No sex in xXx! That’s a real bummer, Bond flicks at least have backless scenes! Gimme Bond anyday!
MADRAS INK. 