2017, Movies

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017, DJ Caruso)

If I saw the first xXx film, I don’t remember enough of it, beyond that terrible CGI snow, to know whether this film is significantly worse. But it sure feels like it. Much like the Fast and the Furious franchise, this film feels like a very calculated attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator of movie fans: people who want to see action, not very clever quips and gratuitous T&A without the nudity, plus some vague sense of values, at a global scale. Only this film is significantly lower budget in just about every way – the script is bad and so is the CGI. The film tries to go even more global than the Furious films by including various Asian film stars, but none of them are really in their element in an American film.

SPOILERS

So, the casting is an obvious attempt to give the film a more global reach but lets the movie down. Also, Diesel is worse than normal, as he’s supposed to be charming here and, well, he’s Vin Diesel. Toni Collette seems to hate her life but at least it’s amusing.

The script itself lets the cast down too (at least the parts not added in post). The one liners are not good and even the everyday dialogue is often preposterous. Also, whole scenes seem to be missing from the film, as we are not really clear as to what is happening sometimes, and it’s not like the plot is complicated. (The plot is not complicated, but motivations are missing at times and at other times people aren’t identified because…well, I’m not sure why.) There’s also a scene of “grenade russian roulette” which is basically incomprehensible. I’d love for one of the cast or the screenwriter to explain to me what they think it’s about.

The CGI is significantly lower budget than in the other Vin Diesel blockbuster I watched this year. There are two scenes in particular, involving waves and an exploding plane respectively, which are laughably bad given how high profile Diesel is at this point. It’s crazy they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do better.)

The continuity is brutal: I noticed multiple scenes where actors limbs weren’t consistent from shot to shot, or their positions weren’t consistent from scene to scene. Seemingly significant characters disappear from scenes then reappear or are in certain locations and then show up elsewhere with no explanation. Nobody seems to have watched the film in its entirety to make sure it makes sense.

But I did chuckle a few times and appreciate two or three attempts at humour. (I will say that at least one of the character cards introduced via post is quite funny.) So that keeps it from being the worst Hollywood movie released theatrically in 2017 that I will ever see.  But this is some seriously lazy filmmaking, wherein Diesel et al. decided they didn’t need to do a whole lot to make some money.

2/10

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