'XXX'

From the director of 'The Fast and the Furious' (with the "THE" intact) comes a modern and hip James Bond/Ethan Hunt spy movie starring none other than the Diesel himself. 'XXX' stars Diesel as Dom Toretto, oops, I mean Xander Cage, an extreme adrenaline junkie who's sort of a bad guy who ends up being the hero we can all root for in the end. Hang on, I'm confused. Diesel straps in and plays the same role that made him famous. Xander "X" Cage is a no-holds-bar X-Games, MTV, video game generation rebel who is always trying to bring down "The Man". And then one day, "The Man" comes knocking (a horribly scarred Samuel L. Jackson) and X decides to drop all his morals and convictions and suit up for the red, white, and blue. The action is awesome, don't get me wrong. Maybe a bit unbelievable, but that's Hollywood for you. I can get over that. I can over the fact that Samuel L. puts out what is arguably his worse performance ever. What I can't get over, are all the "extreme" and cheesy 1 liners that are thrown throughout this horribly written action flick. They're already making us watch Vin Diesel, who was outstanding in 'Saving Private Ryan' and I have to give him props in 'Pitch Black', but he's so drool and monotone in every other performance that it's like watching paint dry if paint was annoying and yelled its dialogue when it thought the scene called for a more serious tone. From a film standpoint, I would go as far to say that 'XXX' is definitely a spoof on the spy action movie and Cohen was over his head trying to deliver something special here. Final result is a 2 out of 5.