Tough guy vs. bratty kids and deadly Ninja!

The Pacifier (2005)
Starring Vin Diesel and Lauren Graham
Director: Adam Shankman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Vin Diesel stars as Shane Wolfe, the toughest SEAL team commander on active duty. After a botched mission to rescue a scientist who has developed some important new military technoiogy, Lt. Wolfe is assigned to protect the now-dead scientist's five young children from enemy agents still seeking to acquire the missing prototype. What follows is an amusing fish-out-of-water story, as the career SpecOps officer learns about family life, and in turn helps the children through their grief and teaches them alot about discipline and personal responsibility.


This type of story has been told in movies and in Afterschool Specials a hundred times, and "The Pacifier" is an average example of it. It avoids a couple of the most typical cliches of this type of comedy, but it dishes up the rest while even working in typical action movie tropes. (Diesel's fight with the ninjas [yes... the film not only has Navy SEALs, it has ninjas!] and the mini-van car-chase sequences are particularly amusing.)

If you're the overly cynical type, or if you suffer from diabetes, you might want to avoid this film--it will send you into insulin shock. I enjoyed its sweetness, even if there are a couple of plot-holes that bothered me.

'Find Me Guilty' is an unusual mob movie

Find Me Guilty (2006)
Starring: Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage, Ron Silver, and Alex Rocco
Director: Sidney Lumet
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When life-long gangster Jackie Dinorsio (Diesel) is offered a chance to escape a 30-year prison sentence by turning state's evidence against his former Lucchesi Crime Family associates, he refuses to turn on those he considers his friends. Instead, he turns the biggest organized crime trial in American history into a vehicle to express his view of family values within the Family.


I like lawyer/court room movies. I like Vin Diesel, and I really liked him in "The Pacifier". I walked into "Find Me Guilty" really wanting to like the movie alot. Unfortunately, I found it a little lacking.

Some critics have complained that the movie turns morality upside down--the mobsters are basically the good guys here (with one exception--mob boss Nick Calabrese, played by Alex Rocco), while the federal prosecutor is a complete rat bastard--but I really didn't mind this aspect of the film, because the character of Jackie Dinorsio is the point of view from which the story is told, and he is truly convinced that all his criminal associates truly are "good fellas." The weakest point in the movie to my mind was the lead prosecutor was portrayed as so over-the-top that he brought down the rest of the movie. (Why did he have prison guards harass and beat up Dinorsio on the night before the Big Final Trial Witness was to appear in court?) Every other lawyer portrayed seemed believable, but the prosecutor did not. (Being that "Find Me Guilty" is based on the real-life 21-month RICO trial of a dozen or so New Jersey mobsters, perhaps the real-life prosecutor really was such a over-dramatic jerk... but he should have been toned down, because he was out of step with the rest of the performances in the film.)

"Find Me Guilty" is definitely Vin Diesel's show, and he manages to truly get the audience to feel sympathy for the wise-cracking Dinorsio, who, in the face of all the facts around him, continue to cling to his notion that there truly is love and respect shared between mobsters. To the very end, Dinorsio hangs onto this idea and continues to espouse it as he mounts a defense of himself and his buddies as his own attorney. In fact, the only friends that Dinorsio seems to have is the lead mob attorney (expertly played by Peter Dinklage) and the presiding judge (Ron Silver) who seems to develop some affection for Dinorsio as the trail unfolds; but Dinorsio never notices. If he does, he doesn't let it show.

There are plenty of chuckles in "Find Me Guilty", but I would have liked for more belly-laughs in the film. I recommend it if you enjoy mob movies or court-room dramas. I don't think it's a great movie, but I think my time watching it was well-spent.

James Bond for the tatooed skateboarder crowd

xXx (aka Triple X) (2002)
Starring: Vin Diesel, Samuel L. Jackson, Asia Argento, and Marton Csokas
Director: Rob Cohen
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

After losing several agents attempting to get the goods on a mysterious Russian crime group known as Anarchy 99, NSA honcho Augustus Gibbons (Jackson) decides it's time to fight fire with fire. He recruits extreme sportsman, professional rebel, and underground Internet celebrity Xander Cage (Diesel) into the agency's service and sends him to eastern Europe. After gaining the trust of Yorgi (Csokas), the Russian military officer turned ararchist and crimelord, he discovers that Anarchy 99 is a far more deadly terrorist threat than anyone has imagined even in their worst nightmares.


"xXx" is a James Bond movie for the skateboarding, snowboarding, tongue-piercing, random tatooing, baggy-pants crowd. From Xander's nifty spy-toys through the superweapon that Yorgi is going to unleash on the world, this film follows the step-by-step recipies that every Bond film since "Diamonds Are Forever" has followed. The action has been amped up--it's pretty much non-stop for the two-hour running time of the film--but the major showpiece stunts are pretty much what you'd expect to see in a James Bond film... and the same is true to the climax AND the denoument.

Heck, there's even one element of this film that makes it seem a tiny bit more sensible and believable than most James Bond films: Xander Cage is established as being 100% capable of pulling off crazy stunts with just about any mode of transportation you care to think of. How exactly did James Bond master such skills? (Not that I'm saying "xXx" is realistic, but then I'd never accuse a James Bond movie of that either.)

People who slam this movie like to complain about Vin Diesel's acting. I don't know what their problem is, as I think he does a fine job... considering he doesn't really have to act at all in this film. (The one scene where he does does do some acting--where Yorgi shows himself to be a more psychopathic monster than even the worse Bond foes--he does an okay job, given the character has been established as having nerves of titanium and a large amount of sympathy for "the little guy.") If there's someone that should be slammed for not giving much of a performance, it should be Asia Argento; she's attractive to look at, but she's not much of an actress, if one is to judge her by this film.

All in all, "xXx" succeeds extremely well as being at being a spy-movie in the James Bond mold. Check it out; it's a great deal of fun.