D

The initial installment of this secret-agent series, from 2002, starred Vin Diesel as a brooding, bruising extreme sports outlaw who was recruited to become a government agent assigned to bust up an eastern European plot to blow up the world. “XXX,” as the movie directed by Rob Cohen was simply titled, was basically a James Bond picture in which the hero had been transformed from a suave, sophisticated fellow into a bad-ass, anti-establishment thug. With Vin having gone on to better jobs–like changing diapers in “The Pacifier”–and bigger paychecks (too big for the producers of this franchise it would appear), the makers have replaced him (permanently, it seems, since there are repeated, and totally extraneous, references to the previous agent as “dead”) with The Cube, who plays Darius Stone, a Special Ops soldier imprisoned for mutinying and striking a superior officer to protest what amounted to a massacre in Bosnia, the way all righteously rebellious military men do when pressed. But he’s sprung by his former commander and deep undercover NSA chief Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) to foil what’s eventually revealed as a dastardly plot masterminded by off-the-reservation Defense Secretary George Deckert (Willem Dafoe) to overthrow the wimpy President James Sanford (Peter Strauss), who–horror of horrors–is recommending a reduction in military spending and an increase in international aid “to make our enemies our friends.” And ever so conveniently, Deckert just happens to be the guy who, in his earlier career, was the general Stone opposed and decked (pun intended).

Clearly “XXX: State of the Union” (the subtle refers to the speech Sanford is giving at the moment Deckert’s plot is sprung) is essentially a dumbed-down, pumped up takeoff on “Seven Days in May,” the suspenseful, cerebral thriller that John Frankenheimer and Rod Serling fashioned from the Fletcher Knebel-Charles W. Bailey II bestseller in 1964, with Deckert serving as a cross between Donald Rumsfeld and the treacherous Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General James Muldoon Scott, that Burt Lancaster played in the earlier film. (Just call it “Three Days in April.”) While Frankenheimer’s picture relied on clever plotting and the buildup of tension to create a genuine mood of paranoia and duplicity, this one–directed by Lee Tamahori, who, after his move to Hollywood following the ferociously powerful “Once Were Warriors” in 1993, has become an efficient but uninspired purveyor of big action flicks–is totally dependent on absurd plot turns and wall-to-wall slambang set-pieces. When I reviewed the original “XXX,” I noted that by comparison to the earlier Cohen-Diesel collaboration, “The Fast and the Furious,” it should really have been titled “The Loud and the Ludicrous.” By extension “State of the Union” is definitely louder and still more ludicrous. Also dreadfully made: the picture is nothing more than a succession of chases, fights and explosions occasionally interrupted by snatches of purely functional dialogue, and even on that level it’s an assembly-line effort. The effects, including the big finale in which Stone, in a souped-up car, proves himself literally faster than a speeding bullet (train), look utterly phony. And the acting–to use the word loosely–is terrible. Ice Cube’s character must have taken his name from the fact that he’s almost totally stone-faced; when he sets aside his customary scowl to imitate a Baptist preacher (in a painful attempt at humor) or indulge in a romantic moment with Lola Jackson (Nona Gaye), his buxom ex-girlfriend (and car suppplier), the result is worse than when he doesn’t. Jackson grimaces his way through his worst performance in years, Dafoe tries to pass unnoticed by underplaying–something he’s incapable of–and Strauss is embarrassing as the put-upon chief executive, a cut-rate president if the screen ever offered one. The only cast member who emerges relatively unscathed is Scott Speedman, as the FBI agent who becomes Stone’s reluctant partner. He scores by reason of seeming relatively natural compared to those posing around him (and he doesn’t have to turn green, as he did in “Underworld”). Certainly Michael Roof, as Gibbons’ obligatory science whiz, offers nothing more than jokey caricature. On the technical side “State of the Union” never manages to shake the feeling that it looks more than a little cheesy, as though it weren’t quite a top-of-the-line model.

But in the final analysis what’s probably most irksome about the movie is the way it panders to an inner-city audience. If the first “XXX” was James Bond refashioned for extreme-sports rebel types, this one has been manufactured for those of gangsta (or gangsta-wannabe) mentality. All the heroes (except for Speedman’s Kyle Steele–as in Stone & Steele) are homeboy types with Attitude like Stone (who’s obviously never abandoned his roots) and the chop-shop personnel who become his cohorts in saving the clueless president at the last hour. (This may be contrasted to the initial escape scene, in which every single one of the military-prison guards that Stone dispatches with such consummate ease just happens to be white–something that, given the nature of our volunteer army, is about as implausible as you can imagine.) And the pandering goes far beyond the color scheme among characters: it extends to the exaltation of the gangsta lifestyle, including the activities that are its practitioners’ stock-in-trade, as totally in synch with the soul of American capitalism. Making easy money by theft is glorified–after all, the people whose cars are being disassembled in the chop shops doesn’t deserve them, anyway. All of this isn’t explicitly articulated in the movie, of course–it’s merely there as a subtext, a given that we’re supposed to chuckle over and accept without demur. That sort of attitude demeans every segment of the audience, including the one for which “State” has been specifically designed (by a bunch of calculating white guys, naturally).

Of course, all that treats “XXX: State of the Union” with a seriousness it really doesn’t deserve. The movie is basically brainless pulp–and even at that, not very well-executed pulp.