XXX2: The Next Level

Herald rating: * *

If the star or the original director couldn't be bothered to turn up for the sequel, why should we? Well, xXx2 does match its 2002 predecessor for mindless action, plot implausibility and finishes with its very own Really Stupid Chase.

The original was touted as a Bond for the extreme-everything generation. Which is why in Die Another Day Her Majesty's spy dude surfed a giant wave into North Korea - and undoubtedly why DAD director Lee Tamahori got the job of stoking up the xXx franchise, substituting for creator Rob Cohen while replacing Vin Diesel with hip-hop leading man Ice Cube.

He's Darius Stone, a bad-ass former commando busted out of military prison by spy boss Gibbons (Jackson returning from the original) to lead a ghetto crew of car-jackers driving Pimp My Ride-mobiles against a coup d'etat.

The United States President is taking a conciliatory line on world affairs and plans to cut military spending. Willem Dafoe's renegade Secretary of Defence plots to get himself into the Oval Office. The only man who can stop him is Cube and his gang of "hustlers and thieves".

That it's a movie where the only memorable line is from the late Tupac Shakur might say something about the hip-hop invasion of Hollywood: Welcome to the age of BlaxXxploitation, possibly.

Whether Cube is jumping on to bridges on powerboats, waging a tank battle on an aircraft carrier, or going undercover at a Washington white-tie party, his reluctant hero just looks, well, reluctant.

His class castmates Jackson and Dafoe don't fare much better in roles verging on self-parody in a film that itself resembles an action-flick spoof. Maybe that's what Tamahori - with help from fellow New Zealand film-maker Geoff Murphy as second unit director - had in mind. A stuntathon of a movie that out-Hollywoods Hollywood action sequels, complete with the dubious computer-generated imaging of its high-speed finale - something else this has in common with Die Another Day.

That and the rest of the haphazard plotting of this just goes to show that in the global battle for the entertainment action thrill, Hollywood had better figure out how to get joysticks on cinema seats fast. And should there be another in the franchise, it best be named xXx-Box.CAST: Ice Cube, Samuel L. Jackson, Willem Dafoe, Nona Gaye, Scott Speedman
DIRECTOR: Lee Tamahori
RATING: M (violence, offensive language)
RUNNING TIME: 101 mins
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts