Vin Diesel, a fast-rising star in the macho movie genre, has now transitioned his career past pure action in The Pacifier, directed by Adam Shankman. The story is about a he-man who is hired to be a babysitter and diaperchanger. The plot, however, is intriguing enough that comedic elements, as featured in trailers of the film, are peripheral to the story. When the movie begins, Shane Wolfe (played by Vin Diesel) is commanding a small Navy SEAL unit on a mission to rescue Professor Howard Plummer (played by Tate Donovan), a kidnapped American scientist who has developed an important military security system codenamed "Ghost." After he is rescued from his Serbian captors, the getaway is botched, and the scientist dies. The Navy then orders Wolfe to take charge of the Plummer household in Bethesda, Maryland (though the film location is in Canada), while widow Julie Plummer (played by Faith Ford) goes to Switzerland with Navy Captain Bill Fawcett (played by Chris Potter), an intelligence officer, in order to obtain the contents of a safe deposit bank, which presumably has a key to the military secret. Although her out-of-town trip is scheduled for two days, the bank will not release the box until she supplies a password; not knowing the password, the trip lasts two weeks while she guesses incorrectly. Meanwhile, Wolfe has the task of taking care of five children. Although she fears that a recent unsuccessful intruder might return to terrorize the family, Mrs. Plummer does not want her offspring traumatized by the fear that they might be kidnapped, so Wolfe is asked not to alert them to possible danger. Wolfe, whose father died while he was at a military boarding school when he was not much more than eight years old, is well trained to protect the family from violence, but he has no training to deal with what appears to be a dysfunctional family in which the children have not had sufficient time to deal with the loss of their father. Each of the children has issues. The father required his son Seth (played by Max Thieriot) to join the high school wrestling team, but he prefers acting; he is absent from physical education classes but eager to excel in a production of The Sound of Music. The intruder, soon caught by Wolfe, is a boyfriend of Zoe (played by Brittany Snow), the teenage daughter who has identity problems and has been absent too often from driver's education classes. Lulu (played by Morgan York), who is about six years old, likes Wolfe very much; after her Firefly Girls troupe is bullied by some Cub Scouts, Wolfe trains the girls to defend themselves. Peter (played by Keegan and Logan Hoover) is accustomed to going to sleep after her father performs the Peter Panda Song, so Wolfe must learn the choreography and lyrics from Seth. That leaves the baby, Tyler, who is at first attended to by Helga, a Czech nanny (played by Carol Kane), until she quits due in part to some of the pranks of the two oldest children. Amusing situations arise, though many are contrived and have little to do with the central plot. Wolfe deals with the children at first by alienating them with military-type discipline; then, after an attack by two ninjas, he proves to be a supportive pussycat. Meanwhile, Mrs. Plummer realizes that the password is engraved on her wedding ring, and Wolfe finds a basement vault where the military secret is stored. The safe deposit box contains a special key to open the vault, which the entrance of which is boobytrapped; Wolfe has to act out the Peter Panda Song to get to the vault. When Mrs. Plummer returns from Europe, Wolfe shows Captain Fawcett the location of the vault, whereupon the latter pulls a gun, admitting that he is being paid handsomely by North Korea to betray his country. The ninjas, also North Korean agents, return to provide muscle for the traitor. Unsurprisingly, the ending requires Wolfe to prevail by showing off martial arts talent. But will he now abandon the family that he has grown to love? In a role equivalent to Arnold Schwartzenegger in Kindergarten Cop (1990), Vin Diesel demonstrates that he is now ready for better acting opportunities and better scripts. A comment outside a screening in North Hollywood, "I hope to God that he's a Democrat," suggests that Governor Arnold may have some serious political competition if Vin Diesel's acting career continues to advance. MH
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