xXx - Triple X
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | xXx - Triple X |
| Original title | xXx |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | Theatrical version: 124 minutes Director’s Cut : 132 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rob Cohen |
| script | Rich Wilkes |
| production | Neal H. Moritz |
| music | Randy Edelman |
| camera | Dean Semler |
| cut |
Chris Lebenzon Joel Negron Paul Rubell |
| occupation | |
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| chronology | |
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xXx - Triple X is an American action film directed by Rob Cohen from 2002 . Vin Diesel , Asia Argento and Samuel L. Jackson can be seen in the lead roles. In 2005 the sequel xXx 2 - The Next Level by director Lee Tamahori followed with Ice Cube in the lead role. In 2017, xXx: The Return of the Xander Cage was released.
action
Xander Cage aka Triple X is an extreme athlete with a penchant for anarchic stunts and violations of the law, which have given him a sizeable criminal record. The agent Augustus Gibbons offers him the prospect of deleting it if he is ready to infiltrate a Russian underground organization called "Anarchy 99" in Prague for the US secret service NSA . He should find out what they are up to besides the usual criminal offenses and excessive parties. He quickly establishes a friendly relationship with leader Yorgi, but at the same time has to be careful of his suspicious right hand Yelena, who, as it later turns out, is also an undercover agent, namely the Russian secret service FSB . Two years earlier she was scheduled for "Anarchy 99", but was "forgotten" after the restructuring of the FSB, so that she received no new orders. Cage initially works with the Czech police contact Milan Sova to get behind the secret machinations of Anarchy 99. However, this turns out to be a traitor.
Cage and Yelena find out that "Anarchy 99" wants to enforce a new world order with the help of biological weapons and the use of a solar-powered hydrofoil . After Cage has switched off the communications center with the help of an avalanche, he is captured. With the help of grenade launchers , the police manage to thwart the execution of Cage and Yelena. Cage kills Yorgi and, together with Yelena, follows the hydrofoil in the Shaver upgraded Pontiac GTO . Shortly before Prague, Cage manages to get on the hydrofoil with the help of a parachute and destroy it.
Cage and Yelena recover from their adventure on Bora Bora . There Cage is called by Gibbons and informed that he has passed the "Gibbons test".
background
The film premiered in the United States and Canada on August 9, 2002. It opened in theaters on October 17, 2002 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The budget for the film is estimated at $ 85 million. In the United States, he grossed over $ 141 million, including over $ 44.5 million on the opening weekend. Outside of the United States, the film had additional revenues of $ 109.8 million. In Germany, more than 2.1 million visitors could be counted at the box office. With the film, the Sony group set its own box office record in Hollywood within a year.
The shooting of xXx - Triple X began on November 26, 2001 and ended in March 2002. The name "Triple X", however, appeared several times before the shooting of this film. For example, before the United States entered World War I in December 1915, a German agent named Triple-X was caught. He had hidden bombs on leaking ammunition transporters in American ports, but they had not detonated. There is also a role in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me from 1977 with the title Triple X. This is the Russian agent Major Anya Amasova, played by Barbara Bach .
The film was shot on locations in the United States, Austria , French Polynesia and the Czech Republic .
The new German hardship band at the beginning of the film with the title Feuer frei! can be heard is the German band Rammstein , of which Kolya is wearing a fan shirt in this scene.
The jump with the Chevrolet Corvette off the bridge at the beginning of the film was filmed simultaneously by 18 cameras.
Tragically, the stuntman Harry O'Connor was killed in the shooting, when he during the parasailing the -Stunts for the final chase with then planned landing on the submarine "Ahab" to a pier after a Czech historian and politician František Palacký named Palacky -Bridge collided in Prague. The accident happened during the second shoot of this stunt, whereas the first shoot was completed without an accident and can be seen in the theatrical version of the film.
The NSA scene, which used 120 monitors, was also filmed in Prague. The entire land mass of New Zealand is missing on the world map on the double doors in the NSA rooms . However, the NSA conducts global information gathering and espionage abroad.
Director Rob Cohen has two cameo appearances , once as a Colombian on horseback and later as the voice of the caller who informs Yorgi that xXx is a spy. On the one hand, this is not made clear in the German translation; on the other hand, the real traitor is the policeman Milan Sova, played by Richy Müller.
Eric Bana was approached as the first choice to cast the role of Xander Cage . However, he declined to shoot The Nugget .
Since Vin Diesel never rode a motocross machine before his three-month preparation for the shoot , he was trained by the world's elite motocross riders.
None of the tattoos Vin Diesel wears in this film are real. They also switch from setting to setting.
The skateboarders Tony Hawk and Mike V , as well as the BMX rider Mat Hoffman, have a role in the film's opening scene.
In the scene where the smoking sniper kills the cops, Xander uses a rocket launcher. However, this is not a weapon, but a video camera that was painted green.
When Xander enters Yorgi's club, the Czech zither soloist Michal Müller plays the theme music from The Third Man on a zither . The music that is played in the background during the avalanche scene comes from the band Hatebreed (I Will Be Heard). The music played when xXx is sitting in the cafe is the same that Hugo Drax plays on the piano when he first met James Bond in the movie Moonraker . This is Frédéric Chopin's Prelude No. 15 , also known as the “Raindrop Prelude”.
The two Sukhoi Su-22s , which were supposed to destroy the hydrofoil “Ahab” at the end of the film, were no longer in service with the Czech Air Force at the time of filming in this version.
Director's Cut
In April 2005 the Director's Cut for xXx , which was around eight minutes longer, was released on DVD in Germany . Despite the words uncensored ( Engl. For uncensored ), the DVD has been censored. The reason for this does not lie in the FSK , but in its British counterpart, the BBFC . This would have given the Director's Cut a release from 18, which the distributor Columbia TriStar did not want. So it was decided to censor a scene for a 15+ release. Since Columbia TriStar sells its DVDs across Europe, the German version was as little spared as the rest of the European versions. The scene in question can be seen in the 27th minute of the film, in which both the direct hit of a headbutt, the associated noise and the blood-smeared face of the man lying on the ground have been replaced by alternative, more distant shots.
reception
Although the majority of the critics rated the film as mixed or negative in terms of the plot, xXx became a commercial success, not least because of the multi-praised action scenes, and boosted the level of awareness of Vin Diesel enormously.
The lexicon of international film describes xXx as a “swan song” on “style-forming espionage spectacle à la James Bond”. xXx is a "charmless, completely capitalized film", which "tells its story in a booming and coarse manner".
Carsten Baumgardt von Filmstarts stated that the film, which had a big budget at its disposal , had become “considerable”, even if it was “completely meaningless and trashy”. Nevertheless, it had to offer “tongue-in-cheek entertainment at a good level”. The "Action Tornado" is a "James Bond variant for the fun sport generation", which knows how to offer "almost the maximum of what is currently possible" when it comes to action. The “exaggerations” of the “crazy” stunts “cannot do without a certain charm”. The “laconic antihero” played by Vin Diesel is “endowed with a good dose of dry humor”. The portrayal of Michael Roof , who shows "refreshing irony" and depicts a "super weapon fanatic", who was compared to Q from the James Bond films, is also convincing . Also Richy Müller leave a "decent impression." The "usual clichés" such as "blatantly exaggerated" Eastern European gangsters do not cloud the overall impression. “Technically stunted”, “fireworks are allowed to burn down”, which is underlaid with a suitable, “thundering-booming soundtrack”. The plot holds "a few small surprises" ready, while the stuntmen have to "do the hardest work". Baumgardt awarded three out of five possible stars.
The editorial staff of Cinema compared Vin Diesel with Popeye , since the actor in his role looks like a "cult comic man". The film comes up with the "usual patterns of the agent thriller". The “indisputable screen presence of the alpha male” compensates for the “brainless act”. A highlight of the film can be found in "a daring snowboard sequence in front of the foothills of an approaching avalanche". The film was rated four out of five possible points.
According to Oliver Hüttmann from Spiegel Online , Vin Diesel is “a bald extreme athlete with a hacker attitude”. The "bald muscle man" was "Hollywood's secret weapon against James Bond", but could not come close to him. Instead, Diesel could rather close the wide gap left by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone . Still, Diesel was named “Mr. Testosterone with a tattooed bull's neck "currently has a" very close "falling" height as an actor ". “The sets and special effects seem a bit too cheap”, although the film “with a budget of 50 million dollars is almost an independent production”. The "agent boom" is "not very serious", but it is also "not a parody". Hüttmann's conclusion is: The production is “not the best film in the world, it will not establish any new cinema regulations, even if the next parts are already planned. But it is amusing as a rebellious act against Papa Bond. "
Sequels
In the following months and years several films followed that tried to copy the pattern of the action cracker, including the official sequel xXx 2 - The Next Level , which was played by Ice Cube rather than Vin Diesel due to excessive fee demands .
In the special edition of xXx the last use of the "first" xXx is shown. However, this scene was not played by Vin Diesel, but by a stuntman.
This scene is about Xander's meeting with a woman and his subsequent murder by the secret service, who blew up a house and only Xander's neck tattoo escapes the flames, which is taken as evidence of his liquidation. In this scene there is again fire! to hear from Rammstein.
In 2017, another sequel was released, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage , showing that Xander survived. The director was DJ Caruso and Vin Diesel can be seen again in the lead role.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was released by Universal Records in 2002 . In some versions, however, the CDs only consist of ten instead of eleven tracks. The song "Down With The Sickness", which appeared in the film, was not released on the CDs.
CD I.
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CD II
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Web links
- XXx - Triple X in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- XXx - Triple X atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- XXx - Triple X in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ release document for XXx - Triple X . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2003 (PDF; test number: 91 584 V / DVD).
- ↑ a b Start dates according to the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ a b c d e budget and box office results according to the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : US box office charts: Action star Diesel still unbeatable , features section, dpa , August 19, 2002
- ↑ J. Nagler: National minorities in the war - "Enemy Aliens" and the American home front during World War II . Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2000, p. 117.
- ↑ Locations according to the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Background information according to the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ XXx - Triple X at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- ↑ XXx - Triple X. In: Lexicon of international film . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Film starts : film review , Carsten Baumgardt
- ^ Cinema : film review
- ^ Spiegel Online : xXx - Triple X: Biceps vs. Brioni , Oliver Hüttmann, October 18, 2002