Ice Cube delivers frigid performance in 'XXX' sequel

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

XXX: STATE OF THE UNION (PG-13) One Star (Poor) A silly action sequel, starring Ice Cube as a new secret agent who recruits gang-bangers and carjackers to save the union from a military coup. Samuel L. Jackson co-stars for director Lee Tamahori. Columbia, 100 minutes.

That's the gigantic improbability pill we're supposed to swallow in "XXX: State of the Union," the silly sequel to the Vin Diesel action film of 2002, a film that suggested the U.S. Special Forces should recruit an extreme sports athlete to lead our counterterrorism efforts. That movie was also mighty ridiculous, but "State of the Union" makes it suddenly look downright reasonable.

A new threat is detected, the amassing of a large military contingent loyal to the U.S. secretary of defense (Willem Dafoe, at his most dastardly.)

Eventually, they plan to attack the president and kill him as he's delivering the State of the Union address to Congress.

Agent Gibbons, the head of the National Security Agency is, once again, a slumming Samuel L. Jackson.

He believes our nation needs a new super-secret agent, a second "XXX," to counter the expected coup (no doubt because Diesel declined to participate in this sequel). Gibbons calls on one of his former soldiers who's now surviving hard time in a military prison.

Out comes Darius Stone (played with the emotion of a stone by Ice Cube). He's got a ton of attitude and a prerequisite talent to shoot two guns while diving sideways, drive like Jeff Gordon, wire and fuel devices to blow them up, and carjack a tank.

Idiotic, noisy mayhem ensues, with stilted dialogue that belongs on bumper stickers, and a plot that would embarrass a bad comic-book writer. I don't know about the State of the Union, but the state of this movie franchise is gosh-awful.

Rated PG-13, with much violence, but little blood and profanity.