XXX: I Pledge Allegiance

Matty the Mainer was commissioned to write the third installment of the XXX series: XXX: I Pledge Allegiance. He gave me a rough draft of the script, and I must say, I was disappointed.

In it, XXX is played by (he hopes) James Spader. Instead of jumping out of exploding buildings and doing extreme sports, he enjoys fine wine and smooth jazz. There are some stunts, like when Spader jumps out of an exploding sky scraper onto a waiting helicopter, from which he straps on a snowboard and disembarks over a snow covered mountain. So I guess there is some jumping out of exploding buildings and extreme sports, but just not as much.

The basic premise is that the bad guys have changed their tune: they're trying to kill American freedom with kindness. It's going to take a new kind of XXX to expose them as the frauds they are and blow the bastards up. Enter the charming Toji Watanabe (played by Spader), a man who was adopted by Japanese businessmen when he was two, and is the world's foremost conman. His job is to con the bad guys into revealing they're bad guys through his in affable charm and wit. At one point he finds out a dude is a bad guy when the dude can't tell the difference between a Merlot and a Malbec. He then shoots the guy in front of Samuel L. Jackson, who reprimands him for being so reckless.

The other issue I found with the script was the bad guy: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He poached the exact bad guy from Mission Impossible III, except his only line is: "There's an explosive charge in you head." That's all he says the whole movie.

I was shocked when he told me the film was green lighted.