Darius Stone

xXx: State of the Union (released as xXx: The Next Level outside North America) is a 2005 American action film directed by Lee Tamahori and a sequel to the 2002 film xXx. It is the second installment of the xXx franchise, and was produced by Revolution Studios for Columbia Pictures.Vin Diesel and Rob Cohen, the lead actor and director of the original, had signed onto a sequel before the first film had opened, but both dropped out as Diesel disliked the script, while Cohen was busy making Stealth. Cohen remained as an executive producer. Ice Cube took over the lead role as the new xXx agent and Tamahori was brought in to direct, following the huge commercial success of the James Bond film Die Another Day, which he directed. Two different scripts were prepared for the film, and the one written by Simon Kinberg was selected; the other script featured a radically different plot. State of the Union was a Box-office bomb and it was criticized by reviewers, mainly for the performances, an illogical story, and overuse of CGI-influenced visual effects for most of the action sequences. It was followed twelve years later by xXx: Return of Xander Cage in 2017.

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