In 2002's XXX, Vin Diesel managed to single-handedly steal the spy film genre crown from James Bond by creating a secret agent for the new millennium.
A mixture of brawn and charisma, Diesel's Xander Cage looked to be a character with a long and bright future ahead of him.
Sure, the premise of using an extreme sports athlete to fight terrorism was preposterous, but Diesel at least made the notion fun and the action was almost non-stop.
But the best-laid plans of mice and producers go out the window when your star chooses not to renew for the sequel. Perhaps it was because he got a peek at the script for XXX: State of the Union.
This time around international terrorism gets domesticated when an extremist faction of the U.S. military, led by the secretary of defense (Willem Defoe), plots to kill a good portion of the Congress during the president's state of the union address, all because the prez isn't quite Bush enough.
Before any of that can happen the NSA headquarters is attacked by ninja-like soldiers who kill everyone except Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), who manages to escape the mayhem along with Toby Lee Shavers (Michael Roof), XXX's version of Bond's Q.
Suspecting the attack came from within the government itself, Gibbons turns to the only man he can trust ... Xander Cage? Nope. Apparently he was killed in South America. Oh, well.
Next in line. Darius Stone (Ice Cube), a hard-ass former Navy SEAL who once served under Gibbons and who is now serving time in a military prison for breaking a general's jaw.
After busting Stone out of prison in the first of many of the film's "yeah, right" action sequences, Stone turns to the only people he can trust to help get to the bottom of the conspiracy -- his peeps in the 'hood.
It's at this point State of the Union starts leaking into blaxploitation territory, painting the inner-city characters as either gang-bangers or car jackers, all with hearts of gold. As absurd as it gets, it might have had a chance of working had someone with Diesel likeability, such as rapper Xzibit (Pimp My Ride) -- who plays the boss of the car-jackers -- been the new XXX.
But no, we get Cube (he of the Michelle Rodriguez school of acting; you know, scowl a lot and people will think you're tough) who appears to believe his character's name is a type of acting style.
Regardless, in the end it all comes down to a race to Capitol Hill to save The Man where lots of things get blown up, plenty of people get killed, lots of music gets cranked and the state of Hollywood gets a little sadder.
(This film is rated PG)
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