The marketing for XXX seemed really funny to me. It couldn't have been more blatant in its purpose -- to sell Vin Diesel as the new action star. After attributing the success of The Fast and the Furious to him, the movie's marketers wasted no time in selling XXX as an action extravaganza worthy of Schwarzenegger in the '80s. Some members of the press even labeled Diesel as the new Schwarzenegger. What, so soon? Let him chase Linda Hamilton around, rescue Alyssa Milano, or fight some dreadlocked aliens first, then call him the heir to Arnold.

Although the ad campaign for XXX certainly felt obvious, the movie takes the baton and runs with it even more aggressively. I've never seen a film try so hard to be accepted by the youth of its day. Viewers know they're watching a movie about a secret agent who is supposed to be the ghetto alternate to James Bond's sophistication. But just in case we didn't catch where he's coming from, the movie takes pains to hold up the message in big shiny letters. Diesel's first act as Xander Cage, underground X-treme sports hero, is to steal a Corvette from an out-of-touch senator. Xander, speaking to a camera rigged in the front seat, says something to the effect of, "Senator, you wanted to ban rock music because it promotes violence. It's just music! You wanted to ban video games because they waste our time. Well, sometimes it's the only education we got!" He might as well have had, "YOUTH, LOVE ME!" stamped on his forehead.

XXX continues this silliness by having Xander greet his friends, who come up and say, "Whassup, dawg!" in such an unnatural way that it comes out as, "What's up, dog?" He's eventually recruited for secret agent work by Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), a man surrounded by stuffy cronies who utter dorky lines clearly meant to be set-ups for a witty response by Xander. 

But XXX isn't truly disappointing until after Xander begins his mission, for it's at this point when the movie, trying so hard to be different from a James Bond flick, ends up becoming a James Bond flick. XXX includes some obvious digs at its predecessor, most notably an opening sequence in which an agent in a tux is killed because he can't blend into a crowd of European punks, and a later scene in which a car loaded with rockets, gadgets, and doodads is disparaged for having nothing useful on it. But in the scenes where the movie takes itself seriously, it is literally being a James Bond film -- complete with Bondian gadgets, numerous chases, bad guys with thick Russian accents, a "Q"-like weapons specialist, a leading lady converted from the enemy's side, and fancy title graphics (played after the film ends, for some reason or other). The only 007 element lacking in XXX is a strong evil henchman.

You can't give your movie the tagline "A new breed of secret agent" when the movie has nothing new. No, making the hero faux-ghetto and having his adversaries be punks will not cut it. That tagline requires the movie to contain originality, which is about as plentiful in XXX as nutrition is in candy.

That said, I have to put in a good word for the movie's stuntwork. Action sequences in XXX contained enough excitement to please me despite their unbelievability. And Vin Diesel, who is clearly awkward as a typical action hero, pronouncing his lines with conspicuous self-consciousness,  nevertheless emerges as a charismatic bundle of energy on the big screen. He looks like he's having fun, and that comes through in his performance, even though the smoothness of his one-liners does not.

XXX had the potential to forge new territory, but it chose not to. While trying to outdate James Bond, this movie just proves that nobody does it better than 007. 

(Review also posted at http://www.windowtothemovies.com)

Released by Warner Bros. and rated "PG-13" for violence, non-stop action, sensuality, drug content, and language.