A man (Val Kilmer) is shot in the head, but survives–barely. When he wakes up from his coma, he finds himself in a backwater New Mexico town with no memory of who he is, or what he was doing there. He does, however, have the strong feeling that something bad is going to happen–something involving the President of the USA. The film follows him as he tries to piece the fragments together, aided by the town sheriff and his fiancée. Nothing, of course, is what it seems, though.

I saw the trailer for this on the Bubba Ho-Tep DVD, and it looked good. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t match up to expectations. Val Kilmer is quite engaging as the amnesiac Frank, but the plot wastes too much time noodling around in blind alleyways (like the story line involving the deputy sheriff and the people-smuggling). The climax is confusing (who is on which side?), and the final scenes are hopelessly clichéd.

My first thought after seeing the original film was, “wow, that was quite cool.” My only thought after seeing this sequel is, “wow, that was stupid.” Not dumb. Dumb doesn’t know any better. Stupid is deliberate. Someone intentionally gave the green light to this screenplay, and I hate them for it.

The start of the film is actually quite promising: a fight scene in a garage re-introduces us to Frank (Jason Statham) as he deals with a gang of car jackers who have the temerity to tackle his pristine Audi. Good fun. His current job has him acting as chauffeur for the son of an important US government official. In taking the kid to a doctor’s appointment, Frank promises that he won’t let him come to any harm (I can sympathise with the fear of needles). The bad guys (inevitably) attempt to harm him, and Frank rescues the kid in spectacular fashion. Good use of an oxygen cylinder. But holy crap does it go downhill from there.

There’s this thing called suspension of disbelief, see. For the purposes of watching some entertaining action, I’m willing to put aside the fact that I have a degree in physics, and just roll with the heroic stunts and intricate set-pieces. An action hero should be tough, and I want to see them take more of a beating than an ordinary human could withstand. I want to see them punch villains so hard they fly through windows, and drive cars so radically that a fleet of cops can’t catch them. That’s good. But there are moments in this film that can only be explained by the fact that Frank, The Transporter, is, in fact, a superhero. He has driving superpowers. Perhaps he was run over by a radioactive 5-series when he was a kid. I dunno.

The first film was interesting because in addition to the external conflict between the bad guys and the good guys, Frank was also dealing with an internal conflict: he is a man bound by rules he has imposed upon himself, yet his sense of honour forces him to break those rules. That’s where the heart of the first movie lay. The car chases and fight scenes were excellent (the one with the oil in the garage is particularly memorable), but they were the seasoning on an already perfectly cooked steak.

In Transporter 2 Frank is, to all intents and purposes, invulnerable, invincible, and immune from self-doubt. Even his fucking car doesn’t run a single scratch, despite crashing it through concrete barriers and using steel scaffolding for brakes. In the first film he got mad about the damage to his Beamer. Here, there is nothing. No emotion, no interest. No soul.

The villain’s plan to infect the kid’s father (important government official, remember) with a virus, is stupid. There must be thousands of ways to target a public figure with a deadly virus, yet he chooses the riskiest and least certain one. He also has no intention of providing the antidote to any of the infected parties, so why does he have it around in the first place? Answers: a) so that Frank has something to chase after, and b) he’s stupid. And the plane crash? OH MY GOD MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED.

I’m dead. The only reason my ghost has returned to write this is to rant about one final piece of unforgiveable dreadfulness: the villain’s prowess as a martial artist. In his introduction scene, he is shown practicing kendo, and he is clearly a world-class swordsman. Action movie logic dictates therefore that the hero and the villain must end up battling it out with sticks and swords and anything else long and pointy they can break loose from their immediate surroundings. But does either of them pick up any weapon other than a gun before the credits roll? No. Bad film, no donut.

The only reason I’m giving it half a star is for the fight scene with the hose pipe. That was pretty cool. But not worth sitting through the rest of the movie, especially seeing as I’M DEAD NOW.

Much less sickly sweet that you might imagine from the trailer. What you don’t get from the trailer is that there is actually a love story involved, and that this is the main plot line. What happens to the children is all really in support of the fairytale servant/master romance that takes place. It is too caricaturish to weigh in as a true classic, but it’s amusing, touching, and definitely worth a watch.

I knew this was going to be rubbish when I sat down to watch it. So why did I watch it? I often wonder what I get out of crappy action films. I think it’s that no matter how bad the script, or how poorly acted or directed, they usually have some unique and inventive way of putting lives in danger. That’s the hook an action flick uses to pull you in. Once you’re there, it has to pay off its promise with chase scenes, fight scenes, stunt work, and explosions. None of which are particularly easy to do–even to do badly. See? There’s a craft there that I can appreciate, even while I’m despairing over the hammy dialogue.

xXx² lacks that initial hook. For the original film, the premiss was that Xander Cage (Vin Diesel, and you can slag him all you like, but I dig the Vinster) was an extreme sports fanatic with an attitude problem, who gets recruited by a secretive US government department to go on an undercover mission in Eastern Europe. You knew that this would lead to brash James Bond-style stunts and escapades with an extreme sports twist: snowboarding, bungee-jumping, and all that. It was the Extremeness that gave the film its very name, and which tantalized you with its novelty. I enjoyed it.

Vin Diesel dropped out of the (inevitable) sequel, and was replaced by Ice Cube, another man who takes a lot of heat for the quality of his acting, but whom I like. In the story, Xander Cage has been killed, and Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) has to come up with a new xXx (the code name for extreme deep undercover agents). The new agent has to be tougher, more extreme, more “off the grid”. And they come up with…Darius Stone (Ice Cube), a former US Navy SEAL who served with Gibbons, but who is now languishing in military prison for insubordination and breaking a General’s jaw. He has bags of attitude, and the combat skills to back it up. But Extremeness? Not so much. He’s just another cookie-cutter action hero.

The replacement hook for the film takes the form of a plot by the US Secretary of Defence (Willem Dafoe) to stage a coup during the President’s State of the Union address. Taken on its own, that is a perfectly acceptable concept. But to do it justice, you’d need the characters to be close to the President, and for most of the action to take place in and around that setting. Most of xXx², however, is taken up by Stone and Gibbons trying first to figure out what the conspiracy is, and then how to get close enough to the coup to throw a spanner in the works. It takes far too long for the hook to kick in, and by the time it does, its impact has been squandered by a dreadful succession of movie stereotypes of government agents (Scott Speedman), politicians (Peter Strauss), and gangsta homies (Xzibit).

In short, it falls flat. Waaaay flat. By delaying the hook, it even failed to live up to my low standards of what constitutes a decent action flick. There are a few nice fight scenes, and one good set piece where Darius uses an aircraft carrier’s launch catapult for target practice, but it didn’t deserve to be released under the xXx brand. DTV is would have been more appropriate.

(Oh: and as a last note, if you’re going to spend two minutes on a scene where the resident geek introduces a cool gadget like a powerful electromagnetic suction glove then I EXPECT TO SEE THE HERO ACTUALLY USING IT TO GET HIMSELF OUT OF A TIGHT SPOT BEFORE THE CREDITS ROLL. Come on, people. Get with the program.)

Delightful post-modern take on the 80’s buddy movie. Some of the jokes don’t come off as well as they could, but there is much more on ffer here than just a comedy/buddy/detective caper. The way it twists many of the genre stereotypes is excellent. It’s great to see Robert Downer Jr. back in action again, and Val Kilmer gets his best role since Thunderheart.