xXx: State of the Union (2005)

Directed by Lee Tamahori. Starring Ice Cube, Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Roof, Sunny Mabrey, Nona Gaye, Peter Strauss, Xzibit, John G. Connolly. [PG-13]

Vin Diesel’s incumbent xXx has been killed (so they say), but the day still needs to be saved, so Jackson turns to ex-Navy SEAL Darius Stone (Cube), currently serving a stretch at Leavenworth. But breaking out proves to be easy as pie—desserts being what this new xXx looks like he enjoys a little too much—and now the new “secret agent” gets to bring the elbow-throwing fight to a group of well-armed but barely-competent conspirators led by the renegade Secretary of Defense (Dafoe). Dumb enough to make its predecessor look…well, not smart, but at least a C-minus student. Cube hardly makes for an impressive action here, so choleric that he barely even seems interested in the token female characters (all of them garbed and photographed in such a lizard-brain style that even a group of female violinists playing a fancy-pants soirée look like fashion models and/or call girls); as for Jackson, he pretty much phones it in and all but disappears for a large chunk of the movie, and Dafoe actually underplays the villain (by his standards, at least). With its preference for visual incoherence and second-rate CGI in place of actual stunts, hardware, and pyrotechnics, this thing hardly rates at all even as a brainless action picture, though it’s not everyday you get to see a tank blowing up another tank by being hurled like a slingshot projectile toward it. Gratefully, it was one and done for Darius Stone, and the next sequel returned to the franchise’s “roots” (xXx: Return of Xander Cage).

32/100