XXX

directed by Rob Cohen

with Vin Diesel and Samuel L. Jackson

opens Aug. 9 at Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, and others

Ah-nuld’s in cryogenics until Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Van Damme and Seagal are straight-to-video P.O.W.’s. Sly’s buried under Planet Hollywood’s rubble. Jackie and Jet simply aren’t linguistically equipped to deliver that clear, quotable apple-pie catchphrase. So who you gonna call to kick an arch-villain’s teeth in?

If Hollywood’s answer is burly ex-bouncer Vin Diesel, the old-school, hard-R, hard-ass action genre is truly dead. But we can deal with this tragedy. Just bring on more (gulp . . . ) Tobey.

XXX is a rigged wet T-shirt contest where the babe with monster jugs and nothing upstairs invariably wins. A bloodless global spy thriller for Generation PlayStation, XXX is a hell-spawned hybrid so effectively pre-hyped that its opening title sequence demands (and receives) the 18-34 demo’s mindless applause.

Xander “XXX” Cage (Diesel) is a power-shake fusion of Tony Hawk, Johnny Knoxville, and the Incredible Hulk, a self-promoting extreme athlete who swipes a senator’s convertible because the politician decries hip-hop and violent video games. (Tru dat; the First Amendment is dope, yo.) This senator is conveniently named Richard so XXX can inevitably scold, “Don’t be a dick, Dick.”

XXX and his buddies celebrate the stunt by bleating “yo” and “phat” until NSA agent/superpatriot Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) intervenes. Gibbons blackmails Xander into infiltrating a party-hearty, vodka-chugging gang of Russian biochemical terrorists known as Anarchy ’99. Read no hyperbole into that. Insert joke(s) accordingly. Extra points for K-19 references.

His role is a walk in the park for Diesel. XXX flexes, preens, and bags a stripper. He works skateboarding, parachuting, snowboarding, skydiving, rock climbing, and motorcycling into his secret-agent life. Yet somehow he avoids devolving into Cro-Magnon man during the course of the film. Endless stunt sequences recall the Tomb Raider movie in their numbingly unexciting execution, courtesy of director Rob Cohen, whose fast-but-confusing cuts also graced The Fast and the Furious.

The requisite espionage gadgetry would seem to be a likely saving grace, but in the spirit of too-good-to-be-true, unintentional ’90s irony, XXX’s amped-up supercar—equipped with flamethrowers, missiles, detachable roof, etc.—turns out to be wholly ineffectual by the climax. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop Diesel from grunting things like “I live for this shit” and “Welcome to the Xander Zone” as if he’s doing an SNL parody of himself.

The body count? No decapitations, no boobies, no graphic sex scenes. XXX‘s likely box office? Now that’s pornographic.

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