In one of those undisclosed, unheard government secret organizations that our tax dollars apparently fund, Vin Diesel has been recruited to take down Russian terrorists. He'll do so in fashion suited for the ADD-impaired, where explosions are as common as bullets. This isn't intelligent, smart, or even remotely original. It's overlong, but still fun.

Slapped with the title xXx (apparently because it makes it harder for critics to type it correctly), this action flick from director Rob Cohen is at the least energetic. It does right what his follow-up, big budget bomb, Stealth, failed to do. Action is constant and intense, and the interplay between Diesel and Marton Csokas is hysterically hammy.

Whether intentional or not, Diesel's wooden, hackneyed performance brings the ridiculous action scenes to life. Like his words, none of this makes any sense. You simply have to stare in awe. Buildings seem to be perfectly aligned for massive motorcycle jumps as they explode. Edits occur to show explosions of unknown origin going up because focusing on something else for more than two seconds would be too long.

xXx deals with action at every turn. Character development? Stuff blows up. Story progression? More stuff blows up. It doesn't matter whether or not it has any logic behind it. This could have been brilliant parody, as Diesel grinds a rail on a cooking tray while dodging sniper fire from the worst shooter in the history of film - and yet, it's not. It's played as straight as a summer action epic can be. It's hard not to see this as a missed opportunity.

At two hours, this one goes on for far too long. The usual array of government spies have their place in an attempt to give some plausibility to all of this mayhem. Samuel L. Jackson is wasted as Augustus Gibbons, the mysteriously scarred man who acts as Diesel's new boss. Then again, why bother with a backstory when you cut to an explosion? That's the mantra of xXx, and if you go in with that expectation, you'll get exactly what you're looking for.