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“Welcome to the Xander Zone” Vin Diesel yells to the camera with certain coolness. “What is the Xander Zone?” you might ask me and I will tell you: It’s a webshow in which all sorts off extreme sports stunts are performed on camera, most of them involving illegal activities like stealing a sports car which will be driven of a bridge. The Xander Zone can also be used as a name for the entire movie as this jacked up version of a James Bond film consists of tons of these kinds of stunts.
Fight fire with fire is the motto when a spy dressed up in a tuxedo in a club, where German Industrial band Rammstein gives a show, stands out of the crowd (no really?!) gets killed. So one of the 3 letter government agencies decides to recruit all kinds of bad-ass guys who most of the time live on thewrong side of the law but have their heart in a good place. Oh, and they recruit them quite against their will of course entering buildings with entire SWAT-teams and knocking the future saviour of the world out cold.
Because that’s what this is all about. Once again a madman wants to throw the world in to chaos and anarchy and it’s up to one man to stop him. These movies are all about megalomaniacs living in large lairs, with tons of henchmen and the obligatory smoking hot girlfriend who at one point starts to get romantically attracted to the lead of the movie. This movie shares so much with the James Bond films it wonders me if it’s a spoof, a ripoff or an upgrade. Those three can be combined. We have the world-domination-plot, the lair, the henchmen and the girl covered. of course the madmen has all of these scientists working for him in his lair. There is a government agency to which our spy belongs to, there’s even a Q-branch making special weapons and equipping cars with neat gadgets.
Originality isn’t xXx’s strong point, but it does make for an entertaining ride which at points is so over the top you wonder what they will throw in next. The answer; even more over the top scenes! of course you know the outcome of the movie the minute you start watching it. No tension there, it’s all about the trip of getting there and that trip is wild even if it’s cliché-filled like a muffin-top.
Now I’m gonna steal a Corvette, drive it off a bridge and basejump from the car in mid-air. I live for that shit!
