xXx: State of the Union (2005)

Darius Stone, a new agent in the XXX program, is sent to Washington, DC to defuse a power struggle amongst national leaders.

Director:

Lee Tamahori

Writers:

Rich Wilkes (characters), Simon Kinberg

Stars:

Willem Dafoe, Samuel L. Jackson, Ice Cube

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Willem Dafoe	...	General George Deckert
Samuel L. Jackson	...	Agent Augustus Eugene Gibbons
Ice Cube	...	Darius Stone / XXX
Scott Speedman	...	Agent Kyle Christopher Steele
Xzibit	...	Zeke
Peter Strauss	...	President James Sanford
Michael Roof	...	Agent Toby Lee Shavers
Sunny Mabrey	...	Charlie Mayweather
Nona Gaye	...	Lola Jackson
John G. Connolly	...	Lt. Alabama 'Bama' Cobb
Ramon De Ocampo	...	Agent Meadows (as Ramón De Ocampo)
Barry Sigismondi	...	Bull
Michael Don Evans	...	Conductor
David Rountree	...	Agent
Ned Schmidtke	...	General Jack Pettibone

Storyline

Agent Augustus Gibbons has selected an imprisoned former US Navy SEAL Darius Stone, a new agent in the XXX program, travels to Washington D.C., where they track a splinter faction of the U.S. military that attempts to overthrow the U.S. government and assassinate the President, led by Secretary of Defense and former 4-Star General George Deckert, Stone's former commanding officer whom he once led a mutiny against. But he's been targeted for assassination by a radical splinter group of dissenters deep within the United States government. The new XXX agent must uncover the insurgents from within. It is the nation's only hope to stop the first coup d'etat in American history.

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Plot Keywords:

washington d.c. | nsa | u.s. navy | mutiny | president | 

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Taglines:

The greatest threat to our nation comes from within.

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Adventure | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence and some language

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [ru] Sony Pictures [us]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

29 April 2005 (USA)

Also Known As:

xXx Squared

Filming Locations:

Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$87,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$366,707 (Spain) (6 May 2005)

Gross:

$26,082,914 (USA) (27 May 2005)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Columbia Pictures Corporation, Revolution Studios, Original Film

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Two scripts were written for consideration. One by Rich Wilkes involves pirates in Southeast Asia and the other, by Simon Kinberg, involves a plot set in Washington D.C. The Simon Kinberg script was selected. Open casting calls in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area were made on 19 August 2004 and 26 August 2004. Shooting would start on 14 September 2004 and go through 1 October 2004. Rob Cohen had earlier suggested that that both scripts may be made, with the one not used for XXX2 becoming XXX3.

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Goofs

When Steele and Darius are discussing the presidential chain of command, Steele says, "President, VP, Speaker of the House, Secretary of State..." as the chain of command to leave the Secretary of Defense as President. That skips President pro tempore of the Senate (after Speaker of the House) and Secretary of the Treasury (after Secretary of State) so it would require six leaders be assassinated, not "just" four.

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Quotes

Maurice: What the hell does the Department of Homeland Defense want with a truck full of cheese anyway?
Webster: You ain't never heard of government cheese?

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Connections

Follows xXx (2002)

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Soundtracks

"As the World Turns"
Written by Tupac Shakur, Darrell "Big D" Harper, Mutah Beale, Rufus Cooper,
Yafeu Fula, Malcolm Greenidge and Bruce Washington

User Reviews

Best comedy of the year......for all the wrong reasons

If you're thinking of seeing this, stop just a minute. What could you do with the two hours of your life that this is likely to take up? You could write a short story, you could do a drawing, you could father some children or you could remove your own intestines with a rusty spoon. All of these activities would be a lot more worthwhile than seeing xXx 2: State of the union (or :The Next Level if you live in Blighty like me). I went to see this with high hopes that it would be another xXx... A mindless American James Bond Movie just without the class (sorry if i offend anyone by that, but thats is essentially what xXx was). But I was so wrong.The film opened promisingly, showing something that wasn't what it seemed, but despite this being a film about setups and double crosses that was possibly the best plot twist in the whole film. The film rapidly descends into cliché after cliché (the script seems to have been created by entering lots of clichéd lines into a computer and programming it to spit them out randomly). The plot is riddled with holes which leave you wondering what just happened and was it significant, then later on you find out that it wasn't. In terms of acting Ice Cube is brilliant....at saying every line in exactly the same way. The great Samuel L gives an average performance but he could have just telephoned his lines in and it wouldn't really have made much difference. Willem Dafoe give us a generic bad guy performance. Scott Speedman does quite a good job as the investigative NSA agent despite being dangled from a helicopter, but this role is unlikely to get him very far in terms of his career. Lets get down to the important part now. If its an action movie, it needs good and original action sequences right...not if you're working on xXx2. Basically, things go boom and guns go bang, but we're not given anything really new here and there aren't really enough credible action sequences to keep the audience hooked. The train sequence towards the end of the film looks terrible, like something out of a Playstation game. The CGI falls flat on its face making the films action sequences loose credibility. one thing that confused me was who this was aimed at. by having a Black main character and featuring lots of black characters I thought maybe it could be trying to get a larger black audience. But nearly every black character is a stereotype of black 'Gangsta' culture. There is a line where xXx says "I was born looking guilty" but this is lost when the rest of the black characters are portrayed as crooks and thugs... in positive light! what kind of thing is this movie trying to say? I just gave up trying to read into it as I realised, there is nothing to read into, it is a very shallow, badly written, badly acted, badly produced action yarn. So bad in fact that I was actually laughing most of the way through... Best comedy of the year.