Extreme Diesel
XXX: Welcome to the Vin zone.

By Cheryl Eddy

YOU MAY REMEMBER Vin Diesel from his scene-stealing turn in last summer's Point Break on speed, The Fast and the Furious. As a tough, livin'-by-his-own-rules street racer with a hidden heart of gold, Diesel growled all the good lines ("I live my life a quarter mile at a time!") and raised his profile so high it's hard to believe that XXX (directed, as was Furious, by Rob Cohen) is his first major starring role. Given the success of Furious, it's not surprising that Diesel's latest character, Xander Cage, is a similarly tough, livin'-by-his-own-rules extreme sports icon with a hidden heart of gold. The key difference is the word extreme, for XXX takes the Furious formula – fast-paced action, chest-thumping conflicts between he-men, exultant nu-metal soundtrack – and amps it exponentially.

The set-up: tattooed malcontent Cage spends his days pulling off outlandish tricks (parachuting from a Corvette as it sails off a high bridge) and marketing tapes of his escapades over the Internet – until, of course, a matter of national security arises, and in the best La femme Nikita tradition, Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) recruits Cage for a mission no conventional operative has been able to complete. At first, Cage – who, we've been informed by one of his pals (rapper Eve in a brief cameo), is "never gonna sell out" – balks at the task, but through a series of training exercises that happen to include numerous opportunities to launch motorbikes over exploding buildings, it becomes clear that Cage, dubbed "Triple X" by Gibbons, is the only man for the job. Oh yeah, and if he doesn't agree to take the job, he'll go to jail for his flying-Corvette misdeeds.

Cut to Prague, where America's newest secret agent sets about infiltrating Anarchy 99, a diabolical Russian gang mixed up in stolen cars, prostitution, underground nightclubs, and other unseemly business. Naturally, there's also a plan for world domination afoot, masterminded by the group's greasy-haired leader, Yorgi (Marton Csokas). As luck would have it, the Anarchy 99ers are also extreme sports fans, so Cage rapidly gets in deep, sparring-flirting with Yorgi's right-hand woman (Asia Argento, Dario's daughter) as he goes.

Certainly XXX was plotted with James Bond in mind, and it features a number of plainly obvious references to the series; there's even a dorky gadget master who supplies Cage with fantastic gizmos like binoculars that can see through brick walls (and, natch, women's clothing). But XXX is no Austin Powers; though the one-liners are plentiful, the film takes the secret agent genre very seriously (just wait for Yorgi's stock villain speech outlining his evil scheme – you know it's coming, and it's coming irony-free).

But the story, or the fact that the story rips off every spy movie ever made, is irrelevant here. XXX is entertaining enough to justify its flagrant fouls, which also include a few too many gratuitous shots of chicks in wet bikinis and an insistent overuse of Cage's uncatchy catch phrase ("Welcome to ... the Xander zone!"). This is a movie whose success depends on the audience gasping a collective "Holy shit!" when Cage gets out of another tight spot with effortless, fearless aplomb, outrunning the Colombian army, an avalanche, hails of bullets, and so on. (As the movie progresses, one gets the feeling that the filmmakers sat around drinking beers and brainstorming exactly how many outrageous elements they could cram into each action sequence.)

For its lead, XXX should serve as the tipping point to introduce the term "a Vin Diesel movie" into the film lexicon. As Cage, Diesel has maximum broad appeal: he's a "bad guy" who turns (mostly) good in order to save the world, with the coolest car, the wildest stunts, and more sex appeal than Arnie in his Mr. Olympia days. Off-camera, Diesel may be notoriously vainglorious, but in an era where the pretty-boy likes of Ben Affleck are touted as action heroes, it's high time to welcome the return of the muscle-bound, '80s-style one-man army.

'XXX' opens Fri/9 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.