7. xXx: State Of The Union
After the success of the franchise starter The Fast And The Furious, Director Rob Cohen and Vin Diesel went on to shoot xXx. It was a pretty formulaic actioner which was supposed to update the notion of the super spy for the new millenium. The only scene of note is Rammstein setting fire to a club as they perform Feuer Frei in the opening sequence. For the second movie in the series the director and its headline star had disappeared to be replaced by Lee Tamahori fresh from Die Another Day (possibly the worst Bond movie ever) and rap legend Ice Cube. Samuel L Jackson returned as Augustus Gibbons, a role which spookily foreshadowed his future outing as Nick Fury. Ice Cube's first four albums are angry, political classics: vital social documents which chart the black experience in a violent America. The grooves of each disc are so drenched in righteous indignation they make Rage Against The Machine sound like Justin Bieber. The fallout and flak from his being so outspoken saw him retreat to safe, party material for his subsequent albums and a filmic output which centred on sappy comedy, namely Are We There Yet?, Barbershop parts 1 and 2 and the Friday franchise. xXx: State Of The Union is a chance for us to see the Brotha ya love ta hate bringing it with attitude for 101 minutes in a far more coherent manner than that of its scattergun, stunt-for-stunt's-sake predecessor. Ice Cube oozes the same seething charisma which makes his early albums so essential. Strong supporting performances from Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Peter Strauss and the peerless Mr Jackson make this a top quality action movie. In an interview on the DVD, Lee Tamahori says that Ice Cube "Never was a cop killer. He was just the irreverent rapper, raging against the machine." Now, if you know the difference between your Ice Cubes and your Ice-Ts, you'll know it was the latter who performed the song Cop Killer with his rock band Body Count, which suggests to me that Mr Tamahori didn't even know which rapper he was directing! That makes it an even better movie.