Blackfinger

XXX: State of the Union

Directed by Lee Tamahori

Look at Ice Cube (who made his film debut as Doughboy in Boyz N the Hood) now flexing his new veiny biceps in XXX: State of the Union. It is unmistakable proof that hip-hop culture has reached its steroid stage. Black teen subculture's showy development into a mainstream force has happened through the commercializing of its rage-and-frustration postures. XXX: State of the Union is a cartoon-like status report on that pop cooptation.

It's a black pop-star's vehicle (initiated by Vin Diesel's biracial and extreme-games identity in the first film), yet this second installment isn't any more progressive than the dreams of Empire implicit in the James Bond action-series. In fact, it is the XXX series' fulfillment of teen-empowerment daydreams that exposes the oppressive potential in hip-hop. The art form's clenched fist of unexamined teenage energy here gets so pumped up and streamlined that it resembles, imitates and glorifies the harsh system it once seemed to redress.

Director Lee Tamahori, a New Zealand-born Maori, shows an almost frightening understanding of this entertainment impulse. State of the Union snaps and explodes as proficiently as Tamahori's Bond franchise Die Another Day. But in State of the Union, Tamahori has keyed in on ethnic macho fantasy with an uncanny single-mindedness that syncs with Cube's own juvenile hiphop vision. Cube was always apoplectic and prone to fantasy more than he was a scrupulous rap-chronicler of social realism. That the role of former Navy Seal Darius Stone turns Cube into a near self-parody isn't exactly a betrayal but a distillation. It's evident from State of the Union and his crude Home Alone knock-off Are We There Yet? that Cube can think of no better way to proclaim his own class advancement than by joining Hollywood's exploitation practices.

He does the same over-compensating routine as Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Augustus Gibbons, head of the National Security Agency. Gibbons recruits Darius to foil a beserk defense secretary's (Willem Dafoe) plan to stage a political coup that involves killing the U.S. president. Watching Cube and Jackson face off is hilarious verging on ridiculous. They're like scowling puppets, attempting to out-sneer each other. The idea is to take the XXX series beyond Vin Diesel's unilateral rebellion (we're informed "Xander Cage was killed in Bora Bora"), and somehow make it more of a black thing. "It's time for a new direction," Gibbons says. "We need someone deadlier. With more attitude." That's when Tamahori introduces Cube/Darius, handcuffed in military prison (for insubordination).

Tamahori first revealed his own clenched fist and skillful technique when he made his directorial debut with the 1994 New Zealand film Once Were Warriors. That depiction of down-under urban tragedy, the disintegration of Maori tribal culture, had a timely similarity to the inner-city crises dramatized in rap records. But better than any of the early 90s ghetto flicks, Once Were Warriors traced the violent atmosphere in ethnic communities to its roots in social oppression. It didn't sentimentalize griping. The film's domestic-violence love story featured memorably sensual, conflicted wife and husband characterizations (by Rena Owen and Temeru Morrison) and made its points with sensitive and brutal efficiency.

When Tamahori "graduated" to Hollywood, there was hope that he would inflect genre movies with the same special intelligence. After all, Once Were Warriors was both feminist and macho-ist in its even-handed sympathy toward female suffering and empathy with the psychological boost Maori men got from pursuing chauvinist tribal rituals. (This complex, ambivalent view was later trivialized into p.c. platitudes in the trite, lackluster Whale Rider.) Sure, XXX is meant to be similarly rousing. No doubt lots of moviegoers and rap fans will enjoy its mix of hip-hop attitude and Hollywood panache. It opens with a picturesque parody of American farmlands that turn into a battlefield of firebombs, plexiglass and burning automobiles. Still, cultural pandering to this degree is shocking. The dumbed-down excitation of State of the Union disgraces Tamahori's talent. It's almost inconceivable that he would pervert his own knack for the stress release that audiences expect from moviesby shifting from the alarm of domestic violence to the chaos of homeland warfaresimply to provide cinematic stimulus.

It's idiotic to watch State of the Union as a thrill ride and ignore its cultural signals. Cube and Tamahori intend to address ghetto (and race) anxiety by escalating Darius' rebellion to the level of a national emergency. Darius is supplied with all the military industrial hardware imaginable, that even 007 might envy, to take his aggression from the streets (from his heart) to the Capitol dome (nightmarishly shown as a blasted ruin). This is poli-sci-fi the way Minority Report was but without the ethical scrutiny. Instead, Cube and Tamahori play the race card. When Gibbons is taunted about his scarred face, he ruefully says, "Some wounds never heal"not reference to a battle wound but to Cube's single "My Skin Is My Sin." By the time Darius tells a white agent, "I was born looking guilty!" the race card is played out.

Later, Darius enlists brothers from the hood (including Xzibit, who runs a DC chop shop called Captiol Theater, still pimping rides as on MTV) to help his battle for supremacy. "The fate of the free world in the hands of hustlers and thieves!" Darius exclaims, a line stupidly exultant enough to be from NWA's Straight Outta Compton album. (The audience's biggest laugh comes from a dossier photo of Darius that is familiar from Cube's NWA years.) Although Darius first pouts, "I'm not feeling too patriotic these days," he eventually speechifies: "We got the freedom to hack and jack on the same block as the White House. Fight for that right or freedom won't be free for long!" That Tamahori accepts this political inanity as an adequate form of liberated macho fantasy suggests that he finally got his chance to film a juiced-up, super-macho tribal blow outbut unfortunately at just the moment Hollywood has turned human experience synthetic.

XXX's action scenes are elaborate, but they look exactly like X-Box graphics. Tamahori's technique lacks the splendor of DePalma's Mission: Impossible (which he rips off for his climax); only a truly visionary look might have sanctioned Tamahori's social dreamingat least esthetically. (The film's only visual joke "Black guy, white tux"describes Darius hiding among a group of waiters.) This contrasts poorly to the superb special effects in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which has some of the wittiest, intricate f/x designs since the film industry went digital. The philosophical farce is the source of a primarily visual representation of mankind's intellectual folly. (It also features rapper-actor Mos Def in a role, unlike Cube's, that refuses hip-hop stereotype.)

State of the Union is like a blaxploition version of Goldfinger, spiked with trivial hip-hop references. (The president quotes Tupac's "Wars come and go but my soldiers stay eternal," which means less than Bill Clinton, in real life, quoting Nina Simone.) Cube and Tamahori collaborate to convert hip-hop's social impressions into a videogame movie. They didn't stop to realize that a videogame movie leaves you nothing to do with hands but masturbate.