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75This is a B movie rooted in gut-level stirrings of power and retaliation.
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70A smooth blend of visual special effects, exceptional stunts, fluid photography, sharp design and a possible best-selling soundtrack.
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70What's fun is that the road to that climactic Capitol showdown is paved with one ridiculous and relentlessly edited set piece after another.
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70Opens explosively and never lets up.
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63Theater of the absurd, masquerading as an action thriller.
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63There are really only two kinds of big-budget action movies: stupid, and good and stupid. Surprisingly, XXX: State of the Union is good and stupid, which makes it an immediate improvement over 2002's meatheaded "XXX."
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60Thankfully, State Of The Union's pulpy, adrenalized blaxploitation spin on the secret-agent genre provides the dumb fun its predecessor should have dished out.
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50Most of the movie is standard action fare, but the political commentary is interesting when it's allowed to surface.
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50Basically the first movie all over again, with plenty more of the bridge-jumping, rocket-launching action that audiences loved about the original.
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50A big, loud, proudly brainless popcorn flick that blows up cars, trucks, tanks, boats, helicopters and even a train.
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50At least this movie seems more aware of its trashiness than "National Treasure" was. It's therefore freer to have some off-the-cuff fun the way Steven Seagal's more tolerable vehicles once did.
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50This is a movie about guns blazing, men punching, speedometers straining and explosions exploding. On all those levels, it succeeds just fine - which makes for a great amusement-park ride, but perhaps not much of a movie.
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50Hilariously, gut-bustingly, mind-blowingly, jaw-droppingly stupid.
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Director Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day) has a shruggingly action-intensive style, which feels at once heavy-handed and lazy.
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50You'd half expect the Xbox logo to pop up on the credit roll for XXX: State of the Union, since what's on view is closer to a videogame than a movie. While that will be music to the ears of young gamers, it's noise to anyone hoping for a coherent action movie.
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40It's even louder and dumber than the first XXX, but if watching things fall down and go boom in a very big way makes you cheer, you're in luck.
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40Thankfully, there's the relatively-charismatic and cheeky Ice Cube hogging the lens.
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The winking title X Cubed somehow eluded the makers of this sequel, along with plot coherency, character development, or clever explosions of genre convention.
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40Of course the movie's real raison d'etre is watching Ice Cube tear up government facilities and blockades with a tank, spout Schwarzenegger-style kiss-off lines, and commandeer the kind of babes and high-tech cars that James Bond usually plays with.
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38What isn't scary--or exciting, amusing or fun--is XXX: State of the Union, a movie so preposterous, cliché-packed and over the top that it makes the original "XXX" seem as good as the original "State of the Union."
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38One can give Ice Cube props for attitude, but not much more.
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38The special effects excite at first but wear out their welcome.
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3010 times too much, a nonstop orgy of bullets, bombs, and booty that aims low and hits the bull’s-eye with enough firepower to sink the Bismarck.
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30Loud, dumb and obnoxious.
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25Critics are inclined to describe the action in films like "XXX" and Lee Tamahori's sequel, XXX: State of the Union, as "cartoon violence." I'll resist doing that out of respect for cartoons.
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25The most gratifying thing about xXx: State of the Union is that nobody wastes much time on character, motivation, plausibility, dialogue or sex -- all that slow stuff that drags down ordinary movies.
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25Has to be one of the most absurd of all big-budget action movies, and that's saying something. It's just a blink away from over-the-top self-parody, and I'm pretty sure it's not trying to be.
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20The makers of State of the Union subscribe to the Jerry Bruckheimer big-bang theory of action (big, bigger, biggest), but they don't share that maestro's attention to detail, or apparently his deep pockets. The state of this cinematic union is shabby indeed.
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20So primitive, it must have been written in lizard blood on animal skin.
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12Appalling sequel.
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0How bad does it get? How far past the basement can one elevator go?
User score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 38
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Mixed: 2 out of 38
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Negative: 18 out of 38
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Sam7The whole movie defines perfect summer entertainment. Too bad it came out in April.
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10epic