xXx: Return of Xander Cage- Review

 

I had the pleasure of seeing the original ‘xXx’ movie in an actual cinema in 2002; or at least I think I did, as I can remember virtually nothing about it. At the time, I recall thinking that the entire concept of an extreme sports secret agent was pandering to the surging popularity of the X Games and its ilk in a rather obvious way. Times and tastes have changed over the intervening fifteen years and yet now Vin Diesel returns to the forgotten franchise, surfing in on a wave of money and adolescent admiration from the Fast and Furious films. The cynic in me might say that this is a clear effort to establish another series of biennial money spinners for the gravel larynxed star. Of course, in order for that dream to come true, this franchise invigorator needs to be a success. To this end, Diesel and his team have hired talent from across the globe, including Donnie Yen from Hong Kong, Deepika Padukone from India and Tony Jaa from Thailand.  Once more, my increasingly vocal inner cynic suspects that this diverse cast may have had more to do with ensuring international box office than improving the quality of the film but as a huge fan of Asian action films the lure of seeing Yen and Jaa on the same screen is undeniable. Consequently, it pains me to reveal that the presence of genuine talent in this movie has been squandered in a raucous carnival of embarrassing teenage fantasy.

This is a stupid film. A film of such forehead slapping daftness and disregard for not only the laws of physics but the basic laws of human interaction that it makes me wonder if its ineptness was deliberate. It begins with Samuel L Jackson’s extreme sports spy recruiter attempting to sign up a real life Brazilian footballer to his implausible super gang. He speaks in English whilst the footballer speaks in Portuguese, yet they understand each other perfectly. This occurs out of the laziness of the script writer, the footballer who clearly couldn’t be bothered to learn a couple of lines in another language and the director who didn’t care if people noticed. It sets the tone for the entire film. The plot is a predictable MacGuffin based treasure hunt. A piece of tech, “Pandora’s Box”, which causes satellites to fall from the sky has fallen into the wrong hands, missing badass risk-taker Xander Cage (Diesel) is located by the security services and tasked with finding it. However, a rival team of international badass risk-takers is also on the trail. On the whole, this plot isn’t the problem; many an entertaining romp has featured a similar narrative. The issue here is a wilfully idiotic tone and a script that reads like the scrawlings found in the back of a randy thirteen year old’s notebook.

 

At the centre of this juvenile vortex is the man who irony forgot, Vin Diesel. The whole film seems designed to inflate his ego and make him seem as achingly cool as possible; predictably failing in the process. The main reason for this is that the movie is trying far too hard. Some questionable gender politics make Xander Cage sexually irresistible to all heterosexual women, a truth that seems hard to grasp as Diesel looks throughout like somebody has drawn a smirk on a potato and put it in a singlet. Coupled with the fact that the girls fawning over him must be at least 25 years younger than our star and an atmosphere of creepy middle aged wish fulfilment is conjured. There are other problems with Xander Cage. It is very hard to like a character stuffed so full with such an incredible sense of self satisfaction. He wears a near constant look of preening smugness, regardless of the scene, lowering the stakes and removing any sense of danger. Then there is the constant bragging about BMX tricks and gnarly air that, coming from a 50-year-old man, just sounds silly. Sadly, this “cooler than thou” attitude also applies to the team that Cage assembles to complete his mission, from an insufferably arrogant lady sniper to a young Chinese man whose special skill appears to be being a DJ. When paired off against the actually cool rival team of Yen, Jaa, and some UFC fighter or other I was genuinely rooting for the bad guys to kick the supercilious grins off their faces.

All of which could be forgiven if the action was exciting and well shot. Unfortunately, director DJ Caruso seems incapable of delivering on the promise of the concept. He is more interested in slow motion shots of girls in bikinis than bone crunching action. He suffers from a common problem that American directors have when using Asian martial arts stars; they are so used to hiding the combat limitations of Western actors in action films that when presented with actual physical ability they don’t know how to film it. Such is the case here, where the raw ability of Donnie Yen is wasted in a flurry of quick cuts and unhelpful angles. The joy of Hong Kong fighting epics is actually being able to see and appreciate the dexterity of the actors, a pleasure which Caruso denies us in all but one scene near the end of the film in which Yen is finally allowed to shine. Tony Jaa comes off even worse, with his trademark Muay Thai elbows, knees and extraordinary agility barely featuring. You can add to this one of the most laughable chase sequences in recent memory as Diesel pursues Yen on dirt bikes across a tropical island. Forgetting the fact that the sequence starts at night, before suddenly switching to midday, the bikes magically transform into jet skis, leading to the least convincing CG water effects since Die Another Day’s infamous parachute surfing scene.

Of course, it could be argued that ‘xXx: Return of Xander Cage’ is aimed at a younger, more easily pleased demographic, an assertion I refute. Just because an audience is young, it doesn’t mean they should get force fed malnourishing pap. There are many examples of thrilling action films that don’t reduce women to bikini patterned wallpaper for their star’s mid-life crisis. If anything, Diesel and Caruso don’t give their audience enough credit; being constantly told that something is cool doesn’t make it cool. ‘xXx: Return of Xander Cage’ isn’t the worst or most offensive film I’ve seen in recent years but it is certainly one of the laziest and most cack handed. If you can find fun in watching a lump of human gristle leering his way across the globe to a script that reads like it was written by the American President then rush to see this movie, everyone else should just wait for it to show up on Netflix and fast forward to Donnie Yen.

I give xXx: Return of Xander Cage three and a half Pauls out of Critoph

Assassin’s Creed – Review

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any movie based directly on a videogame will be a substandard mess. This perceived wisdom has been prevalent from the very first days of the genre, with bona fide stinkers like the Bob Hoskins starring Super Mario Bros and the live action Street Fighter movie forming cracked moulds from which videogame films haven’t been able to break. For a closet gamer like myself this is disheartening for I personally know the visceral, emotive journeys of which videogame narratives are capable. The medium in general is often dismissed by the majority of cultural commentators as juvenile or lowbrow and that is not really a fair indictment. Every medium is made up predominantly of the populist and mundane, videogames and cinema included, but we should focus on the highpoints; Casablanca over Carry On Columbus, Portal over Postal. It is a real shame then, that Hollywood continues to treat videogame properties as disposable revenue; a way to exploit the wallets of naïve nerds whilst spending as little as possible. The past year showed some promise; Duncan Jones’ big budget adaptation of the ludicrously popular Warcraft series was an earnest, if unexciting treatment and at least there was Assassin’s Creed to look forward to…

Ah yes, Assassin’s Creed; the long mooted ascendance of videogame movies into the halls of respectable cinema. This adaptation of the long running sci fi/ historical action series had some serious talent attached; Michael Fassbender seemed genuinely passionate about the project and had brought along his ‘Macbeth’ dream team in the form of director Justin Kurzel and co-star Marion Cotillard. It seemed that a videogame property might finally be getting the adaptation it deserved. Sadly, upon viewing the finished film, it looks like the genre might have finally run out of continues, for Assassin’s Creed is a lazily scripted, lacklustre smudge of a film.

For those of you not versed in the extensive lore of the Assassin’s Creed games the essential premise is as follows: Throughout mankind’s history a covert battle has been taking place between the Templars, who believe humanity can only continue through strict rule, and the Assassins, who think that greater freedom will benefit the species. They are both constantly searching for mysterious ancient artefacts which they think will unlock mankind’s full potential. In the present day, the Templars have created a machine called the Animus, which allows the ancestors of these past warriors to enter the genetic memories held in their DNA, and relive ancient experiences in order to discover the modern whereabouts of the ancient technology. The Templars kidnap present day Assassins in order to scan their ancestor’s memories. Simple. The film adaptation takes the decision to not use existing characters from the games but rather craft its own. This is perhaps wise, the central premise allows for constant expansion into different countries and time periods, so it is safer to try something new rather than risk treading on fans’ memories of the games. Another canny choice is picking the Spanish Inquisition as the backdrop to the film’s historical sections; a time rich in violence and atmosphere. That is sadly the last of the film’s good ideas.

I suppose I should initially focus on Assassin’s Creed’s good points. Fassbender is clinically incapable of giving a truly bad performance. His character here, modern day Assassin Callum Lynch, is an unlikeable, humourless blank slate and yet in Fassbender’s hands he is elevated to at least watchable. The Irishman’s charisma and talent is such that he is able to invest a paper-thin avatar with something approaching humanity. Marion Cotillard fares slightly less well, her conflicted Templar scientist being given nothing to do but constantly trust the wrong men. Jeremy Irons is also present, undertaking the role of Jeremy Irons with a performance of Jeremy Ironsish loucheness. Unfortunately, it seems that the casting director of Assassin’s Creed thought that these three actors would be enough to satisfy its audience, for barring Denis Ménochet as a surprisingly well rounded security guard, the rest of the players are universally weak. I can only imagine that they were given minimal direction on set for I’m struggling to recall another bunch of such listless, disinterested bores as this lot. Their combined lack of charisma creates a vacuum of talent which eclipses any threat the story has to offer.

This brings me onto one of Assassin’s Creed’s largest flaws; its rambling, fractured narrative. The videogame series realised long ago that the truly exciting element of the concept was embodying an ancient warrior in realistically envisaged historical settings. Over the space of several games the developers wisely scaled back the amount of present day sci-fi sections in order to give the people more of what they wanted. This lesson has been completely ignored by Kurzel and his clown’s car of writers leaving us with a film that spends two thirds of its time wallowing in gloomy interiors waiting for something to happen. This gives the three sections set in the Spanish Inquisition the rushed feeling of a videogame cut scene; appropriate maybe but I suspect unintentional. Another consequence of this uneven distribution is a complete lack of character development for any of those featured in medieval Spain. I couldn’t tell you anything about any of them apart from the fact that they’re good at climbing and enjoy a good run. I could perhaps forgive the film for this if these sequences succeeded in their remit of providing astounding visuals and thrilling action but alas, they fail in this too. Kurzel has taken the strange decision to smother every frame of Spanish footage in thick clouds of CG smoke; a baffling choice which often had me squinting at the screen in an effort to make out what was going on. The visual effects in general lack any kind of polish and too often rely on strange speeded up helicopter shots which seem to incessantly shout, “This is cool, right guys?” at the viewer with nervous excitement.

One of Assassin’s Creed’s thrilling action sequences.

I fear that if anyone is to blame for the mess that Assassin’s Creed has become it is Justin Kurzel as director. I did not see either of his previous films so I can’t say if this is just a misstep but he fails markedly with even the simplest elements of visual storytelling. He has no understanding of how to film action; his fights and chases have no sense of geography or escalation. Any nuance of exciting choreography is lost in a fitful splat of choppy editing, shaky cam and computer generated fog. As mentioned before, he allows the majority of his actors to turn in turgid, soul draining performances and perhaps his greatest error; he makes an adaptation of a thrilling action game no fun at all. The lack of humour in this film is quite staggering. It is a world inhabited by miserable, unsmiling people trapped in an unending competition to see who can pull the most serious face.

All in all, things are not looking good for the future of the videogame adaptation movie but then perhaps that is not such a bad thing. Videogames succeed in telling stories that maybe just aren’t possible to translate to celluloid. The finest of its medium tell tales which immerse and interact in ways that cinema can’t, often taking tens of hours to complete and giving the player ample time to fully invest in their characters. Perhaps it’s time to write off videogame adaptations as a failed experiment and devote resources to supporting fresh script ideas instead. The genre has failed to produce a single quality motion picture in twenty years and Assassin’s Creed has shown that even with a decent budget and talented leads, the understanding of the material just still isn’t there. It would perhaps be fitting if Assassin’s Creed’s final victim was its own genre.

I give Assassin’s Creed four Pauls out of Critoph.