Man, XXX is a bad movie. I was thinking about recusing myself from writing this review simply because I spent my weekend watching The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Chinatown, Annie Hall and Bring It On. My thinking was that maybe my crap sensor was a little more alert than normal. Possibly, I was over-reacting. Then I thought about it for three more seconds and realized that I am duty bound as an “I have a movie review site, too!” critic to give my full and honest opinion. Also of note is the fact that Erich and TAWP (The Award Winning Pornographer) watched XXX with me. I should also note that the three of us, along with Erich’s girlfriend, sat around for a good half hour talking shit about how bad this stinker of a film smelled.

Personally, I had very high hopes for XXX. As some of you may know I love Vin Diesel, and here was a real opportunity for him and Rob Cohen to prove that The Fast And The Furious wasn’t a fluke. I’m here to report that it was. I should give you all a little background on director Cohen. He used to direct the TV show thirtysomething. Then he did some really terrible movies (Daylight, Dragonheart, The Skulls) before shaving his head, piercing his ear and making The Fast And The Furious. Apparently he is dating a woman half his age now, too. Which is all fine, except for the fact that with XXX you got a movie aimed squarely at fifteen year old boys made by a man who was born when Stalin was still running the U.S.S.R. [Ed Note: 1949]

Notice how he lost the mullet and gained the earing.

As bad a filmmaker as Cohen is, XXX is so low that I’m going to blame everyone involved. Everyone: The actors, the writer, even the boom-mic guys and the caterers. Let’s get back to the writer. Rich Wilkes gets the credit for this crap fest. I’m scratching my head, because I remember reading that XXX went through something like two-dozen rewrites before Cohen and Diesel were happy with the script. Lots of times in movies, particularly bad movies, you will see plot holes. In XXX these holes are so big that you could jump a motorcycle onto a Corvette and then race the Corvette off of a bridge and then snowboard in the air before you race an avalanche down a mountain… Oh wait, that’s part of the plot.

Let’s just start with the Avalanche sequence, since it stood out as rotten. All these realy bad Russian ex-military guys are holed up in a giant castle somewhere near Prague working on something really sinister. The Czech police can’t raid the compound because there is a radio tower that would tip the bad guys off to any move they made. Xander Cage, better known as Special Agent XXX, or just X, decides to jump out of an airplane, parachute and then snowboard down to the tower and blow it up. Or something. We never really learn what X’s plan is. No matter, because as soon as he gets on the ground, fifteen bad guys with snowmobiles go tearing up the mountain in order to intercept him. In response, X does what anyone else would have done: chuck two grenades into the snow 20 feet above his head.

The result of his macho shenanigans is a really big avalanche that X decides to just out run. It’s funny because on the real long shots the avalanche gains a little too much ground on Xander, so the computer guys have to speed him and his snowboard up. Quickly, the avalanche kills all the bad guys except for the one really bad guy. To save himself, XXX jumps on top of the tower he is trying to destroy. The avalanche is powerful enough to destroy the bunker where the surviving really bad guy is now hiding, killing him, but it can’t seem to knock down the radio tower. Luckily for X, all that snow manages to unplug the tower or something, because a second later the Czech police are attacking the driveway of the castle. The more we thought about it, the more we realized that the whole snowboarding/tower sequence was totally unnecessary because lots and lots of Czech cops wound up getting shot anyway.

The above wasn’t stupid enough for you? Then check this out. Xander sneaks into the secret underground basement; however he is locked out of real secret room. Good thing he has a magic pair of binoculars! Earlier we learned that these super-specs can see through clothes (But apparently not bras and panties). Down in the basement, XXX uses them to peer right through a brick wall. The interesting part is, when he can see through the wall, he can no longer see through anyone’s clothing. As Erich pointed out, if the bad guys would have taken the time to line the walls with T-shirts, they might have gotten away with their evil plan.

Are you ready for their evil plan? Are you sure? OK, here goes. A submarine. The bad guys (Lamely titled “Anarchy_99”) have spent a gazillion dollars building a fricking submarine in the mountains of Bohemia. Really. It was a submarine. Oh, the submarine fired some sort of toxic bio-weapon that is really, really deadly, but luckily the poison is totally neutralized by WATER. Again, I am just flabbergasted that this movie went through two-dozen rewrites. Of course Hollywood is the scourge of the earth. Anarchy_99 has a whole cabal of Russian scientists working underground building the sub and the deadly missiles (By the way, the missiles look like bongs filled with yellow dish soap and blue dish soap). While two of the scientists go out of the bunker for a smoke break, Yorgi, (Marton Csokas) the leader of Anarchy_99, decides to kill all the other scientists by launching one of the rockets in the basement.

Now remember, the poison bio-crap (called Silent Night – I’m so scared) is so fucking deadly that the NSA had to recruit a big, giant retard like Xander Cage to find the stuff. In other words, it is very deadly. However, brick walls of a 400 year old Czech castle can not only totally contain the deadly stuff, but fans in the ceiling can completely suck it out. There were these stupid little “death meters” that told Anarchy_99 when it was safe to come out from behind their plexi-glass walls. In a sad, sad homage to Das Boot, the orange meters were numbered from 0-400 with little skull and crossbones and TAWP and I just laughed out loud as the meters ticked down. Also, you have to figure that those missiles cost a pretty penny, and that a box of bullets is about $12. Yorgi only killed like twenty people. Oh, we get to watch Diesel cringe and nearly cry as he spies through the walls… And, it gets dumber.

After Yorgi launches the sub on the Danube (To destroy the valuable military targets of Vienna and Budapest…?) and after XXX kills a guy with a heat seeking rocket (the guy was smoking a cigarette, get it?) we have to deal with the most boring chase sequence in the history of film. A horrible nerd (Michael Roof) who had already given Xander a gun that sort of kills people and those handy magic binoculars, gives him a nice looking 1966 Pontiac GTO loaded with tons of deadly weapons. XXX and Yelena (The very cute Asia Argento) go chasing after the sub. Did I mention that the sub can hydro-plane at eighty miles an hour on top of the water? I didn’t? It did. SO, they’re chasing the super-sub and all of a sudden the road they are on curves away from the river. It was such a sloppy scene that I could clearly see a service road that continued along the river as XXX and the girl turned away. Erich’s girlfriend saw it, too. Then we cut to Sam Jackson who is told that the sub is “twenty-two minutes away” from Prague. We cut back to Xander and Yelena who use the GPS system to figure out that the road reconnects with the river in fifty miles. They’re going eighty miles an hour. Do the math. Guess what? They catch the sub before it gets to Prague. And all those killer weapons on the GTO? They use them to blow up a potato cart.

Understand that I have only discussed three of the countless, depressing and insulting scenes. I left out most of the brutal beginning, all of the over the top stunts and the horrible, horrible, hammy acting. The only intentionally funny scene was when Vin and his buddies were tied up in a Columbian coke farm and Vin tells the bad guy he’s short. That’s it. Other than that, every other scene is ridiculous or terrible or stupid or boring or just plain bad. TAWP complained that there were no boobs. Unlike Bond movies, Xander didn’t even get to screw his leading lady. This movie sucked. Avoid XXX like the plague.

Ruthless Ratings:

• Overall: 2
• Direction: 2
• Acting: 1
• Story: 0
• Re-watchability: 3

Special Ruthless Ratings:

• Number of times you were shocked at how awful a performance Diesel turned in: 59
• Number of times you were disgusted when Vin started kissing people: 12 – he does funny things with his lips.
• Number of times you thought it was stupid when Xander started jumping motorcycles everywhere: 24
• Number of times you were impressed by some of the stunts: 3
• Number of erections this movie will cause in fifteen year old mid-western boys: 398
• Number of times the dude next to me said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about” whenever Vin started parachuting or snowboarding: 14
• Number of times me and TAWP laughed at inappropriate moments: 15
• Number of times the dude sitting next to me got angry when me and TAWP laughed: 12