Vin Diesel is XXX

I don’t like most action movies. I’d rather watch paint dry. Most of them try too hard. Take the Brosnan-era Bond movies for example. Bond seduces women, cue explosions. That’s all there is to a Bond film these days. But the film makers aren’t satisfied with that; they want to tack on a plot, some cheesy high-tech gadgets, a love story, clever dialogue and none of it works.

XXX, taking it’s cue from Charlie’s Angels, is pure stylized action and explosions with limited interruptions for things like the plot. The gadgets, love story, and dialogue are cheesy as hell and deliberately so because Diesel and company recognize that there’s no need for it, other than to poke fun at other action movies (the tricked-out GTO at the end of the movie takes the piss out of Bond’s increasingly ridiculous gadget cars). And I loved every minute of it.

(I remembered Diesel from Saving Private Ryan, but I didn’t know he was the voice of The Iron Giant, the title character from one of my favorite films from the golden year of 1999. I also don’t remember him as having no chin, which makes him seem not so hunky as it would seem.)