Ray Pride

"XXX" is the most commercially calculated action concoction of the year, and that's not a bad thing.

As a star-making vehicle for Vin Diesel, described by producer-director Rob Cohen as "this bald, gravel-voiced, mesomorphic, bear-like character with a soft heart and a certain kind of charm," it's priceless. The 35-year-old actor, who coyly yet cannily describes himself as "one-hundred percent multicultural," is neatly poised to replace the fiftysomething generation of spent action stars, and maybe even the 40-year-old James Bond series. Cohen, 53, comes into an interview wearing a "nice Maui surfer shirt," shaved head and several earrings, sipping yerba mate. "It gives you sort of mental clarity without the buzz of caffeine. You want to taste it? It's a bitter taste and you have to drink it through this thing. It's a gaucho drink. I went to Argentina on a fly-fishing trip and all these guys were sitting around doing this all day."

"XXX"'s fast-and-furious stunts start with a blond man stumbling to his death in a loud and bombastic Rammstein concert. "Yeah, there's a guy, a white, blond American guy in a tux who is not in this world that we're gonna now explore. A multiethnic, anti-heroic leading man, Vin, is going to come in and take this turf to a new place. Mixed identity is the calling card now instead of ethnicity. You look up on that screen, and if you're Hispanic-American, you see something of yourself in Vin, if you're African American, if you're white American. If you're a Sephardic Jew, you could look up and see yourself in Vin. Vinnie is, in many ways, a Rorschach test of all races. 'I don't know if he's exactly me, but there's part of me in him,' and because of his vulnerability, because of his soulfulness and his macho packaging, his deep voice, his big arms, his sculpted head, which, y'know... ." Cohen rubs his own clean pate. "As the ethnic entities of America merge and meld in the inner cities and as the hip-hop aesthetic has become more persuasive in our culture, there was room for someone to come along, and that someone is definitely Vin Diesel."

Set in Prague, "XXX" mixes espionage with a kiss-happy romance with ethereally beautiful and sublimely Italian Asia Argento. Between the explosions and sometimes convenient plotting, there are knowing references to the limits of contemporary Russian anarchist philosophies and suicide bombers worldwide. "I have my degree in anthropology from Harvard and I constantly look at culture and say, where is it going? What's making it move? Where are these new ideas coming from?" Cohen says. "I'm not passing myself off as the arbiter of hip, but I have my ear to the ground because I love it. Without sounding like an egomaniac, it's coming from me. When I see X-Games sports become adopted by the Winter Olympics, and I see a Czech athlete with a helmet held together with gaffer's tape win the gold medal, I know something's happening in this world. And I want to put that on film."

Just action? Just stunts? "I think the audience has a real sense of whether a film is just a mayhem-fest," he says, intense blue eyes lighting up. "I mean, 'Gone in 60 Seconds' is a film that has a lot of stunts but didn't do the business [my previous movie] 'Fast and Furious' did for a third of its budget. It was because of the characters. Compared to the script of 'Chinatown' and 'Godfather,' 'XXX' is not going to hold up. In terms of this kind of movie, it's a better script than many that come along. I am very proud of what we've done. I know what I'm doing and I know I'm not making 'Road to Perdition.' 'XXX' takes a lot of time to develop Vin's character's basic dynamic. To develop a very sincere, thorny relationship with Asia Argento. It's not just, 'Let's run to the next stunt.' When you pander, if you just give a stunt-fest, you get the sixteen-year-old boys, but you're not going any further. They're not coming back for a second viewing. But when you do something with honor and intelligence and respect for that audience, they feel it. I made this movie without profanity, without blood, without overt sexuality and I made it sensual and intense. And that's because I have a fifteen-year-old son and I have respect for him and his friends. I don't do movies about serial killers, I don't do movies like 'The Cell,' I don't want to bring more misery and negativity. I'm going to give you a really good story and intensity--not profanity--intensity. No sexuality--sensuality--not sexuality. In the end, you're going to enjoy it more because it's given to you with respect for your intelligence and taste, as opposed to the presumption of a bunch of middle-aged, overpaid, over-pampered executives and directors and producers going 'Yeah, the kids, they like it, tits and ass, give them that.' I don't think like that. I don't want my son to smoke and drink or do drugs or to get to a place where he's desensitized to violence. But I do think that commercial movies work from intensity. I ride that red line of intensity right to the last bit so that when it goes to the MPAA they're sitting there like a deer in the headlights. All their little rules, they can't go, 'Well, he had two shots of blood, he had three fucks, he had this, he had that,' I don't give them any of that. So then they have to judge it. Their reason for giving us the PG-13 on the first go-round, I wish they would publish it as a review. It said, PG-13 for 'unrelenting action sequences, sensuality and drug reference.' Oh, unrelenting action sequences, that sounds like a good review!"

XXX" opens Friday.

(2002-08-07)

Also by Ray Pride

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Could we talk about the weather? Been hot, huh? Need to cool off? There's the one good reason for stumbling into a theater showing "Austin Powers in Goldmember" this weekend.
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