A XXX Moment

Vin Diesel should count his blessings that he wasn't awarded the $25 million he demanded to return to the screen for XXX: State of the Union.

An utter disaster and sorry mess of a movie, this sequel is even more ridiculous than the incomprehensibly popular original, XXX of 2002.

Augustus Gibbons, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is a renegade fighter who rises to defend the United States from a poorly defined terrorist cell attempting a coup on the government.

Having thwarted many potential governmental threats in the past, Gibbons finds himself at a loss to defend the country against Secretary of Defense George Deckert (Willem Dafoe) who has been training a secret military faction whose aim is to capture and assassinate the president (Peter Strauss).

Presented with the problem of finding himself the only good man among a possible entire upper-level military of traitors, Gibbons reaches out to Darius Stone (Ice Cube), who is unfortunately being detained at a maximum security prison.

An ex-Navy SEAL and once member of a mutiny against Deckert, Cube is suddenly sprung from the hilariously barely secure prison and is knighted the new Triple X Agent.

Stone's prison break should have been the best scene in the movie but was overshadowed by the utter ridiculousness of it all. Gibbons and Stone plow through every obstacle presented in what is defined as a "triple-x moment" - a moment that, in order to be believable, all rational and logical thought, as well as any good taste, must be completely disregarded.

Stone is an obvious choice for Gibbons as he served with him in the Army. Gibbons believes Stone to be the only man with all of the necessary and crucial know-how.

Racing around Washington in a tricked-out gleaming car, the idea that this is a covert operation is preposterous and presumes a brain-dead, wide-eyed audience.

The film itself is portrayed more like a PlayStation video game than a realistic coup d'etat. The acting is atrocious, the female characters were obviously cast based on their silicone to breast ratio and couldn't deliver a line let alone appear on camera without completely ruining a scene.

Calling out to the bad CD-buying, media-believing audience, the movie will probably rake in much more money than it deserves.

Sadly, the movie will be seen. Whether the reason is because people were tricked into purchasing a ticket with the intention of watching a legitimate film, or because they love a pointless action flick in which the so-called action is atrociously surreal, the film will be watched.

Perhaps said viewers have already learned their lesson from the original XXX. If you haven't, wait two months until the film is released early from theatres and offered as a rental - even then, if you see it for $4 at least you won't have suffered through it for $8 bucks.