It has Vin Diesel playing Xander Cage, some crazy wild stunt hero, who at the beginning steals the corvette of a senator who strongly opposed music and video games, and makes a video of himself while he smashes it by jumping off a bridge. At the big party afterwards he says he’s untouchables, and that’s not something to say out loud, we all know that. He barely finished the words and the lights go out and he’s taken away. He wakes up sitting at a diner where a big waitress in heels appears to be nervous and then two guys try to rob the place but he stops them in a second, not fearing their weapons because he figured out it was all fake. Augustus Gibbons applauds. Of course the waitress was fake, but honestly you don’t need to have worked in restaurants all your like to know that a normal waitress wouldn’t wear heels at work. Gibbons says it was a test and he passed, so it’s time to move to the next level. He’s again shot with some tranquillizer, and wakes up on a plane with other two “diner finalists”, and they’ve all been equipped with parachutes and left in Colombia. They’re all captured but they take it lightly because they think it’s all fake again, until suspicions arise and they fight a bit until the Colombian army arrives. One of them takes a packet of drugs and runs away alone, and Xander brings the other one, who has been injured, over his shoulder towards cover. There’s a long action scene where everybody shoots, helicopters too, and he rides a bike, flies with it, and ends without a scratch on him. Gibbons once again tells him that he passed the field test and wants him to do something. Xander refuses, he doesn’t want a job in law enforcement - Gibbons is NSA - but Gibbons threatens him. Not with a gun because of course our stunt-hero is not afraid of death, but with the prospect of being confined in solitary inside a prison, a wild man like him, and this is probably the best scene of the movie, the best non-action scene of the movie (there are not many actually, and the others are... well... :-/ ). This is when they actually acted. Gibbons depicts for him the image of a wild lion being trapped in a cage day after day, Xander’s eyes suddenly fill with uncomfortable terror. A good scene! They don’t waste much time actually acting in this movie that is all about action, but this scene at least was good.
Then Xander has the face to say that they can’t do it because they have nothing on him... I mean, really? After the corvette stunt, and who knows what else, he has quite the face!
He’s sent to Prague, to work with Milan Sova, Czech secret police. They go to a club for rich criminals, and Xander immediately goes to talk to their target Yorgi , ratting out the cop as a cop to gain their trust. They saw his videos, one of them is even a fan. He says he wants to buy cars and then they party, which means they bring in various girls but after all they’re criminals.
He’s told to get closer to Yorgi and is sent a lot of gadgets Bond-style.
When Sova is discovered spying on him and Yorgi, they go after him and Xander shoots him with a fake-death bullet to save his life. Now he’s welcomed to Anarchy 99, Yorgi’s group. Xander kisses Yelena then they all go to a big mansion. Kirill is in love with Yelena and Xander keeps hitting on her.. only girl in the group, there’s no escape; then he finds a girl in his room and says “the things I’m going to do for my Country” before having sex with her. Might be funny for guys, but it’s also stupidly dangerous in the story. Not important though, because in this movie only the action scenes are important.
It turns out Yelena is one of the good guys, so Xander tells her that he’s a secret agent and she warns him that they found out and are ready to kill him. He escapes using a tray as a skateboard, then Gibbons takes him away and gives him a ticket home, saying he’s been discovered so he’s useless now, and orders him to go home, but he goes back for her. Yorgi’s money went on the construction of a big biological weapon, and now that it’s finished Yelena and Xander (he’s hidden and using binoculars that see through walls - and clothes if you want...) watch while Yorgi kills all the scientists after they finished the job. Xander escapes, but it turns out that Sova has accepted Yorgi’s money and is ready to kill him. Yelena kills him first. She’s a Russian Intelligence agent, and together they talk about stopping Yorgi’s plan and he tell her to go back to him (easy right?) and she kisses him *rollingeyes*. He enrolls Czech forces and is parachuted with a snowboard on a mountain. Many go after him but are killed in the avalanche he caused. Others captured him though, and take him to Yorgi. He says he always knew she was an agent, and is about to shoot them both when the police attack grand style. They can’t stop Yorgi from launching his rocket-like weapon Ahab. Xander kills Kirill with a heat-seeker rocket because Kirill smokes *rollingeyes* and then he shoots Yorgi, but he has about thirty minutes to stop the rocket before it hits Prague. They follow it in a car, then he gets on it and brings it under water. It explodes, but of course he comes out safe, and without a scratch.
Mission accomplished, Xander and Yelena are together in Bora Bora when Gibbons calls to say that he passed “the Gibbons test” and can now do something else....
Gibbons-Samuel L. Jackson - well, he’ll do anything
Yelena - Asia Argento - not a fan, but at least here she plays a Russian, so her bizarre way of speaking seems finally more normal. She doesn’t do an accent here, that’s how she speaks.
Yorgi - Marton Csokas - as always playing the bad guy...
Kirill - Werner Daehn
The Colombian they fight - Danny Trejo
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