XXXplosive - to the max!!! (as hype would say)

Watching XXX on television last night (on Fiver, with a criminal break in the middle of an action scene for an ad break) was a pleasure for which I feel no guilt at all; I just luxuriated in having time to do this. Hegel said freedom lies in the recognition of necessity and there were probably plenty of necessary things to do in my life, but Hegel never faced the possibility of a Vin Diesel action movie late on a Sunday night.
It is curious that Diesel couldn’t or wouldn’t reprise his role for a sequel, allowing his place, if not his character (who was ‘killed off’ inbetween films), to be taken by Ice Cube. Did he have a Keanu Reeves-high-minded moment? If so, with relaunching the Fast and the Furious franchise, he seems to have learnt his lesson that trashy thrillers are his stock in trade.
It was released in 2002 but in the nine years that have passed, it figured on my radar but not to an extent where I was capable of watching it. It is basically an American James Bond, with the principles of the latter taken to their logical, ludicrous point (it even has a ‘Q’ of sorts). Asia Argento, as the femme fatale, wears high-heeled boots and leather tops even in the most inappropriate of situations. At one point, Diesel does with a motorbike what Steve McQueen should have done in the Great Escape, if the latter had possessed the bottle and physics-defying abilities. He also has a souped-up car that is almost identical to that featured in the Green Hornet, making the later, disappointing Seth Rogen vehicle (in both senses) even more lame. Samuel L Jackson gives his usual gruff authority figure (unwitting training for the role of Nick Fury) with disfigurement – I was waiting for someone to refer to him as Scarface and I was not disappointed. Much of the action takes place in the Czech Republic, probably because of low film production costs in the country, but which adds a difference to a standard American romp. Australians may not give a XXXX about a certain lager but I would for this film.
Another film I saw on TV (now some time ago) was the Last King of Scotland, a fictional retelling of the heart of darkness within the Idi Amin regime in Uganda through the experiences of a made-up British medic. Played by James McAvoy against the monstrous Amin, a formidable (and, indeed, Oscar-winning) performance by Forest Whittaker, the former’s downfall is his cocksure flair for adventure and his taste for the forbidden fruit of married women (including Gillian Anderson as a long-suffering missionary), the latter’s his petulant megalomania. The end of the film has gut-wrenching brutality (meat hooks inserted into male breasts for example) though we don’t actually witness Amin’s political end within the visual narrative, just a postscript. One unintentionally funny moment in the movie is Amin talking of meeting up with Colonel Gaddafi for an African Union conference – this picture was made at the time when the West were cosying up to Gaddafi and was making a political point but with subsequent events regarding the war in Libya now, it shows up that while leopards do not change their spots, neither do ravenous hyenas change their characters – (dis)honour among thieves and villains Amin never got his comeuppance (although dying in Saudi Arabia in emasculated obscurity must have been crushing for this tyrannical attention-seeker); whether Gaddafi will receive his is moot.