Driven, in the Extreme

With a star named Vin Diesel and a title like “XXX,” the last thing you’d think this James-Bond-for-the-extreme-sports-gener- ation enterprise would do is take itself too seriously, but that seems to be what’s happened. Impressions created by advertising notwithstanding, fun is something this film surprisingly lacks.

Unlike outright Bond spoofs like the Austin Powers movies or sharp satires of the Bond sensibility like last year’s “The Tailor of Panama,” “XXX” attempts to exactly duplicate a Bond movie, albeit with a character who’s so not the typical secret agent that when he confides his occupation to an attractive woman, she laughs in his face.

The character is Xander Cage (Diesel), a big lug in a sheepskin-lined coat who looks like a combination of a bulked-up Yul Brynner and the puzzled comic-book character Henry. With a voice deeper than a subway tunnel, Xander has his triple-X nickname tattooed on the back of his neck, so he just has to look in a mirror in case he forgets it.

Xander is introduced as an extreme sports adept and a guerrilla fighter for the rights of video games, hardly an endangered species the last time anyone looked. He’s also something of a baby nihilist who’s never too busy to articulate (if that’s the right word) his philosophy. “I like anything fast enough to do something stupid,” he says in a words-to-live-by kind of way. Xander also feels, quite sensibly, “If you’re gonna send someone to save the world, make sure they like it the way it is.”

Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), a veteran operative for the National Security Agency with a mutilated face to prove it, thinks Xander might be his kind of guy. Tired of using trained agents the bad guys can smell a mile away, he wants the NSA to consider “the best and the brightest of the bottom of the barrel. Instead of dropping a mouse in the snake pit, let’s send our own snake to crawl in.”

After an elaborate testing process that takes up a good chunk of screen time, Xander gets the call. He doesn’t like Gibbons, whom he cleverly calls “Scarface.” But with a long stretch in Leavenworth as his only other option, he agrees to fight the good fight.

That means going to Prague and infiltrating a group called Anarchy 99 that may have biochemical mayhem on its mind. It’s headed by the dread Yorgi (Marton Csokas, Celeborn in “The Lord of the Rings”), with comely Morticia look-alike Yelena (Asia Argento, daughter of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento) second in command.

All this is fairly standard and, if you’re familiar with the Bond films, so is most of “XXX.” As written by Rich Wilkes and directed by Rob Cohen (responsible for Diesel’s breakthrough “The Fast and the Furious”), “XXX” even has, in the earnest Toby Lee Shavers (Michael Roof), an updated version of Bond’s venerable gadgeteer Q.

Expect to find as well the usual undulating women in skimpy costumes, the requisite firefights, explosions and car crashes and a whole lot of elaborate stunts. So many, in fact, that the credits list two Diesel stunt doubles, three Diesel bike doubles and four Diesel snowboarding doubles. (Perhaps they all got “I Was a Diesel Double” T-shirts, but maybe not.) One stunt was so dicey that a stuntman died during filming, but the occasional use of computer-generated images to sweeten the presentation has taken some of the fun out of how they play on screen.

“XXX” was so determined to have a Doomsday plot and villainous bad guys just like the big boys that no one thought to include the kind of zest and good-humored energy that made the equally commercial “Scorpion King” so appealing. “XXX” also lacks the Rock, admittedly a limited actor but someone with enough charisma and screen presence to come off like Russell Crowe compared with the phlegmatic Diesel. More busy than exciting, more frantic than involving, more chaotic than entertaining, “XXX” is primed to be the latest success story in Hollywood’s “Sensation of the Week” sweepstakes, but that doesn’t make it a happy experience.

*

MPAA rating: PG-13, for violence, nonstop action sequences, sensuality, drug content and language. Times guidelines: The action is of a pounding, relentless nature.

‘XXX’

Vin Diesel...Xander Cage

Samuel L. Jackson...Augustus Gibbons

Marton Csokas...Yorgi

Asia Argento...Yelena

A Revolution Studios production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Rob Cohen. Producer Neal H. Moritz. Executive producers Arne L. Schmidt, Todd Garner, Vin Diesel, George Zakk. Screenplay Rich Wilkes. Cinematographer Dean Semler. Editors Chris Lebenzon, Paul Rubell, Joel Negron. Costumes Sanja Milkovic Hays. Music Randy Edelman. Production design Gavin Bocquet. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.

In general release.