[CRITICAL] xXx : REACTIVATED

Like it or not boy, it must be admitted that there is something quite fascinating in Vin Diesel. In a few years, the actor has turned a corner in terms of financial weight. It began with his return in Fast and Furious (since Fast and Furious 4) as an actor but also a producer. The saga has been revived and made popular again on a global scale, we could see the image of Vin Diesel to explode. Based on millions of fans – on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… it has some freedom to set up projects directly related to him, to his history and his career. In this he is reminiscent of Tom Cruise, for, and by which the films of today are designed.

While developing ever better the style Fast and Furious, Vin Diesel had quickly announced that it wants to relaunch his other roles who had popularized ; Riddick (from the excellent Pitch Black) and Xander Cage (xXx). The first one got right to the third installment (after The Chronicles of Riddick) to a modest series B, not to the height of our expectations. The second – after the anecdotal, xXx 2 : The Next Level with Ice Cube to replace Vin Diesel – did not look necessarily better, leaving fear in a big nanar. Only this time, the “paw Vin Diesel” has fulfilled his office. xXx : REACTIVATED proving itself to be a very good surprise, managing to move towards something Fast and Furious, while performing with even more irony and self-deprecating.

The first xXx, made at the beginning of the years 2000 by Rob Cohen (also director of the first Fast and Furious), had something more modest – a production to 70 million dollar budget all the same -, more focused on the character to be an alternative to hardcore James Bond. Necessarily today you could only settle for the same process, and D. J. Caruso is well understood. Under the influence of Vin Diesel, the filmmaker enters xXx : REACTIVATED in the same style as the latest installment of Fast and Furious. Namely to propose the action completely uninhibited, unrealistic wish, but assumed with second-degree and a lot of humor. Not to mention the use of a multitude of characters gathered around the hero played by Vin Diesel. One finds here, moreover, the sacred character of the family and friends that he has always advocated in Fast and Furious and that is the trademark of the franchise. Now, even in xXx, it would seem that behind the gross there is a hidden character with a good heart ready to help the needy.

Action, humor, and self-deprecating, xXx : Reactivated is the version successful Suicide Squad Click To Tweet

As well, Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) agrees to help the government to recover Pandora’s Box – a device capable of controlling the satellites in orbit and crashing to Earth -but this time with his team. A band of heads burned also unlikely that the character of Xander. As a reminder, it is basically an extreme athlete recruited by the government for suicide missions. If Fast and Furious has always kept a semblance of seriousness with its secondary characters, here the film plays on the caricature and the parody of the genre. Beyond the character Nina Dobrev (great !) responsible for helping to distance the team, and who loses not one to make advances SM Xander, or in the direction of the elite (Ruby Pink) you can stick a bullet between the eyes by being harnessed to a palm tree, we found two characters that are very specific. A stuntman retarded who spends most of his time to explode as a car, and a young DJ hired to…do ” dig people “. Both lead to situations voluntarily absurd and funny, making of xXx : REACTIVATED the version successful Suicide Squad.

The film segues so during nearly two hours of action-gross, certainly in the short scenes of Fast and Furious, but all the same enjoyable. Between its sequences of bourrinage in good and due form, xXx : REACTIVATED there will many nods to the saga (a cameo is unexpected and hilarious at the end) or the genre of the movie. Especially when Xander, to obtain information, must spend the night with a dozen young gorgeous women. Will he be at all satisfied ? The situation can be judged (the sexism up there of the vertices), but this little sentence dropped by Xander : “that is what I would not do it for my country ! “we understand the desire to lampoon a little more James Bond (who went on conquests to each film).

This may seem surprising, but the reality is that Vin Diesel has often defended (once again via Fast and Furious) a certain image of women on the screen, not to make objects of desires. Of course there are always those in the background who dandinent in a swimsuit, but as soon as it comes to secondary characters, the women are rather put in value. Here, Ruby Rose and Deepika Padukone are an excellent duo ofgirl girl action, and have a minimum of dialogue to make the characters worthy of that name, which is not limited to value their male equivalent. You can always regret the end, where, as too often the woman ends up in the arms of the hero’s evil – the last Mission Impossible had just brilliantly managed, until the end, the relationship between man / woman. But again it must not be forgotten that xXx : REACTIVATED is, above all, to be taken as a caricature of a voluntary kind, can still never be a pure entertainment of deadly efficiency.

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