If all action movies turned into xXx: State of the Union, then the state of the union is weak. The original xXx was mediocre at best. It's greatest achievement was officially introducing American audiences to Italian sexpot Asia Argento. When Diesel bowed out before preproduction on the sequel began, the producers had the fancy idea that each film would have a new person as xXx, keeping the series fresh. This is the second time Diesel bowed out of a sequel (2 Fast 2 Furious). Oddly enough, when he did decide to do a sequel (Chronicles of Riddick), it was to a small movie ignored by nearly everybody. His replacement is Ice Cube (Barbershop 2, Are We There Yet?), who makes his first outing as a bona fide action star. He turns out okay, only because he has that wonderful sneer. He can look tough, but is a bit too pudgy around the middle to come off as credible. Samuel L. Jackson (In My Country, Coach Carter) is also in the film, and he too has a great sneer. And yes, there is a sneer-off at one point.

Agent Augustus Gibbons needs a new xXx because the last one died in Afghanistan. The mention of this is so casual and fleeting that it's almost amusing. Somebody attacked his top secret headquarters, and is killing his old men. He needs to go "off the grid" and figure out who it is. He needs a new xXx, and his man is Darius Stone (Cube), currently in prison for leading an uprising against a four star general (Willem Dafoe, The Aviator, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). Stone agrees, but only if he gets to call the shots. Everybody somehow figures out that the current Secretary of Defense is plotting to overthrow the President. And that current Secretary just happens to be Octavius Deckert, the same man that Stone tried to overthrow. Oh, the coincidence!

If xXx: State of the Union feels like a James Bond movie, it's because its director, Lee Tamahori (Along Came a Spider) directed Die Another Day. And as incredulous as this sounds, State of the Union makes most Bond movies look like intellectual giants. This is merely a shell of a story built around a series of over-the-top stunts, in terms of both scale and believability. There's even an M-like character, Michael Roof, Black Hawk Down), who provides Stone with a bunch of weapons. Screenwriter Simon Kinberg (credited as "script doctor" on Elektra and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle) puts in the barest amount of characterization and logic, hoping that the stunt sequences will wow audiences into submission. They do, but only because they pummel the brain into a stupor. There are so many gunfights, explosions, and chases that all the stunts become boring. There is no point behind them. They don't complement the characters, they overshadow them. There's even a lame Rising Sun-esque sequence where Stone decides he needs help from his old friends in da hood in order to storm the United States capitol. Yes, the US capitol.

Sure they can replace the xXx character with each additional movie, but the least they could do is make the film better. There's all sorts of intrigue and machinations, including a Secret Service Agent (Scott Speedman, Underworld, My Life Without Me) trying to capture Stone, a sexy aide to Deckert (Sunny Mabrey, The New Guy, A Midsummer's Night Rave), and an old love interest (Nona Gaye, The Polar Express, The Matrix Revolutions), but for the most part, they all fail to register. All of the characters fall into convenient, generic archetypes. Mabrey and Gaye are there primarily to show cleavage. Tamahori throws explosions all over the screen, hoping that more is better, but he forgot that in order to have a movie, one first needs a plot. It's pretty pathetic when one wishes that Vin Diesel stayed in a film, but that's what happened here.