XXX (2002)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Most films in the “superspy” subgenre lie beneath the colossal shadow of the James Bond books and films.  This means that like those sources, latecomers have the same ambivalence as to their phenomenal qualities.  Sometimes they seem to take place entirely within a naturalistic world, and sometimes in one that includes just a few uncanny aspects.  And sometimes the superspy’s world possesses outright marvelous aspects, though these are usually confined to specific super-weapons, like Bond’s invisible car in DIE ANOTHER DIE.

Because a few of the weapons in the two-film XXX series qualify for the “marvelous” category, both films fall into that category as well.  However, the general approach of the films is closest to a naturalistic spy-series like the Bourne films, so that the presence of marvelous gadgets in the narratives is somewhat marginalized and treated with a almost condescending irony.

The ideology of the XXX films probably made this necessary in the minds of the scripters.  Whereas Bond would receive his weapons as the largesse of his government employer, both of the characters who portray a spy with the “XXX” codename—Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) in the first, Damian Stone (Ice Cube) in the second—effect an adversarial “Stick It to the Man” attitude toward the government.  Yet at the same time, once each rebel is drafted to fight the Good Fight for the government, both times by supervising NSA agent Gibbons (Samuel Jackson), their actions must be framed in terms of the patriotic protection of the very government they tend to defy.

To be sure, these are both big, loud action-films wherein the details of the plots only lead the hero from one violent encounter to another, so neither film pursues any ideology very deeply.  Of the two, the second is perhaps a little more complex than the first, simply because it must attempt to frame a Black American protagonist within the demands of the superspy subgenre.

The first XXX film stars the Caucasian actor Diesel as Xander Cage, a civilian “extreme sports” devotee constantly at odds with the law.  The NSA drafts him to serve as an undercover agent in a “Russian Mafia”-type operation involving—what else?—extreme sports.  As is often the case when rebels are called upon to serve their countries, the hero has more in common with the villain than with his superiors.  Xander Cage clearly identifies with the gang-leader’s desire to run roughshod over societal mores, and is more than a little taken with the Resident Babe in the gang (Asia Argento).  In due time, though, Cage finds out that the villain has an apocalyptic scheme to unleash a super-virus that will abolish the oppressions of government, and of course, this is a little too “extreme” for the hero.  There’s a great deal of screaming metal and wild stunts, though surprisingly no major mano-a-mano fights.  Diesel’s character is paper-thin but he manages to project a fair attitude of laid-back cool.  The conclusion includes Diesel trying to counter the villain’s machinations with the use of a very Bondian super-car, chock full of flamethrowers and ejection seats, and finding that the car is absolutely useless for his needs.