[Dryerase] AGR Hollywood 'bad guys'

[Shawn G]

Asheville Global Report
www.agrnews.org

Hollywood debuts new 'bad guys' in XXX\

By Shawn Gaynor

Hollywood has always strived to bring audiences in touch with the otherwise 
unbelievable.  XXX, the new movie staring Vin Diesel as Xender Cage, 
delivers this.  Never mind the 40 foot high motorcycle jump onto a barn 
roof, or the hero outrunning an avalanche on a snow board when everyone else 
(with a head start and on snowmobiles) gets crushed by a wall of ice. These 
are standard Hollywood spy movie fare.  The really unbelievable part starts 
with the filthy rich Eastern European “anarchists”… yeah, that’s right, rich 
anarchists.  Furthermore, these millionaire, boy’s club “anarchists,” 
instead of struggling for freedom and justice for the common person, spend 
their time in their mountain castle, bent on world destruction in the form 
of biological warfare.
The film is (sometimes painfully) aimed at young Americans interested in 
counter culture.  The music fits. The hero is tattooed, into extreme sports, 
and steals a senator’s car in the opening scene to dole out some justice in 
relation to something rather bad the senator did.  The film is even named 
XXX despite its PG-13 flirtation, and is bound to draw adolescents. There’s 
no end of extras with blue hair, piercings, and mohawks. These are all 
things that young Americans seem to like the idea of.  But how to twist it? 
How about the hero gets blackmailed, tricked, and forced into service by the 
government?
All those expensive government-sponsored dinners and pleas to Hollywood ears 
to help with “the war effort” must have found their way into the hearts of 
Rob Cohen and his buddies at “revolution” studios. The movie plot reads more 
like a wish-list of right-wing foreign policy than an action film.
The first of these comes when a National Security Agency (NSA) boss called 
Gibbson (Samuel L. Jackson) decides it is time to recruit some agents from a 
list of accomplished criminals.  According to Gibbson, these agents will 
avoid detection because they don’t act trained (which they’re not) and are 
completely expendable, because nobody at the NSA, or presumably anywhere, 
really cares about these American boys overseas. This seems to mesh really 
well with the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 policy changes at the CIA 
for the need to work with “undesirables and criminal elements.”
Use criminal elements for what, you ask?  Well, the movie answers this 
clearly enough: to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, in this 
case a biological weapon that is set to destroy ten cities’ populations.
But first these potential agents need to be tested, and where better to 
polish up some forces into fighting shape for a mission in the evil and 
scary former east bloc?  Colombia, of course! Why not play the Colombians 
against each other to cause a shit-storm of explosions and killing in order 
to see if the agents have any kind of survival instinct?
After that it’s off to Prague.  Yes, that bastion of anarchist resistance, 
where the World Trade Orginization met the anti-globalization movement 
inside the convention center after protesters forced their way into the 
building.
What are the dangerous Prague anarchists up to in the movie? Well, 
Washington will be happy to know that these fictional anarchists are 
planning to kill the whole city, including its tremendous counterculture.
And where do these so-called “anarchists” come from? Not Prague, but the 
ex-Soviet Union. Yes, they gave up Russian democracy and/or communism, and 
their high positions in Russian intelligence and military, in favor of 
anarchism. Washington and Hollywood would like you to know that anarchists 
are really just communists that disliked the fall of the Soviet Union.  What 
else these “anarchists” believe is up to the audience.  The film never 
addresses it, presumably because the film makers know nothing about this. It 
could be speculated, though, that they do, and don’t want you to.  Easier to 
have a mysterious, vaguely evil group of villains (led by an evil 
mastermind) than explain that some people believe deeply in direct democracy 
but really don’t like capitalism.
On top of this, they are sexist. Sexist enough to pimp out their 
girlfriends, and to never let a woman into their inner circle.  They even 
keep a veritable harem of women in their clubs and castle with the sole 
purpose of their sexual satisfaction after a long day of destroying 
civilization (back to the adolescent PG-13 fantasies).
Despite all of this movies shortcomings, I like Xander as a character. 
Diesel’s presence on screen is believably self-assured,  and willing to 
break the rules.  He takes bold risks, and speaks like an ordinary person 
rather than a robotic Schwarzenegger. He fights to save the world, just like 
every young person wants to do. Just be careful who you’re doing it for and 
why, Vin.

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