xXx: State of the Union

Starring Ice Cube, Willem Dafoe, and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated PG.

The most amazing thing about seeing Ice Cube as the lead in a $100-million summer flick is that it doesn't seem amazing. He looks nimble, lethal, and at least as heroic as Vin Diesel, his predecessor in this would-be franchise. Growing up in Compton, becoming part of the most controversial rap group in the world, then segueing to films as star, writer, and director-it's not surprising that the man exudes confidence, not to mention work ethic and versatility. Seeing Ice Cube, large and in charge, makes you realize the tediousness of the standard, chiselled, Aryan lead. Matthew McConaughey has nice gym abs, but what would he do if he ever ran into a pissed off Ice Cube? Whatever Ice Cube wanted, that's what.

The creative spirit animating xXx: State of the Union starts with the casting of Ice Cube. And that's pretty much it. This is not a complaint. The movie delivers the features expected of its ilk: gadgets, explosions, gunfire, chases, rescues, death-defying escapes, and scowling villains. Formal innovation would just get in the way. The only thing it really lacks is a good sex scene. The screen chastity of traditional action stars is perhaps reasonable, considering the known ball-shrinking consequences of steroid use.

Rob Cohen's 2002 xXx spiffed up the spy formula with MTV cutting and a soupí§on of leftie consciousness. For State of the Nation, Cohen stepped aside for an actual Bond director, Lee Tamahori of Die Another Day. Tamahori is a little more restrained with camera moves but equally fluid with big action shots and CGI. But his best work here is in a fistfight set on a train, which I hope is in homage to a similar sequence in the second Bond movie, From Russia With Love. Ice Cube, playing former navy SEAL and now secret agent Darius Stone, has a frenzied punch-up with Matt Gerald, who plays Liebo, the bodyguard of a nasty politician. It's a long scene, and the men make a total wreckage of the set and themselves.

Unlike Bond films, the villain merely seeks to control the United States, not the entire universe. Willem Dafoe invests a cookie-cutter role with a degree of conviction, though the script fails to provide him with plausible motivation for his nefarious plot, a coup d'état against a liberal president. These shenanigans are not particularly credible, and they get downright ridiculous when Stone constructs a ragtag loyalist resistance out of a crew of bling-blingin' car thieves led by Xzibit. The scene where they carjack an Abrams battle tank induced my first major eye-roll of 2005. On the plus side, the tank then blasts the dome off the Capitol building. It is through trashy entertainment that subversive messages have their best chance of inciting those who need them most.

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