This time around, Diesel is clearly in movie-star mode, and the seems a little self-conscious. Part of the problem is the scattershot character he's been given. Plucked from life in prison La Femme Nikita-style, he's a reluctant secret agent whose interests are cool cars, women, and class warfare - in exactly what order is anyone's guess. ("I like anything fast enough to do something stupid in," he says, ostensibly referring to a GTO but simultaneously giving Asia Argento a look.) Diesel has a generally chilly regard for his government bosses, avatars of a system that he and his anarchic buddies condemn in casual conversation. But when he learns of cleverly named terrorist faction Anarchy 99's plan to plunge the world into chaos by detonating biological warheads in key cites, Diesel conveniently turns patriot, complete with stars-and-stripes parachute. (I couldn't help but compare him to Snake Plissken, who made a similar bargain with The Man but remained subversive all the way up to the end-credit scroll.) In a movie tailor-made for these troubled times, we get a cocky American who teams up with a sexy Russian to save a bunch of hapless Czechoslovokians from some crazy anarchists.

Given all that, it's no wonder Diesel has trouble making everything gel. He blows an early sequence that requires him to deliver a lecture while eluding the cops in a sports car stolen from a politician who essentially wants to outlaw youth culture, playing it in an earnest-geek style that clashes with the bad-motherfucker swagger he adopts for most of the rest of the movie. Another scene, which requires him to watch, horrified, as the villains take out a roomful of scientists, mainly shows what an actor looks like when he's trying too hard. But mostly, he's just fun to watch. Sure, the movie plays on his incredible bulkiness and chiseled bald head. But he makes a cool protagonist because he invites an audience to enter his world. He's more than just the next-generation Schwarzenegger, because you can see the light flicker in his eyes and the hint of a smile creep onto his face as - here it comes! - he sizes somebody up and delivers a breezy put-down. So OK, mission accomplished. Anyone who suspected he was just a musclehead ought to be convinced otherwise.

The lovely Asia Argento, heir to daddy Dario's formidable horror-movie legacy, adopts a faux-Russian accent and makes a much-deeper-than-usual impression playing The Girl. Everyone else gives exactly the performance you'd expect in such popular roles as The Eastern European Terrorist (Martin Csokas), The Colombian Drug Lord (Danny Trejo), and The Guy From Spy HQ (Samuel L. Jackson).

Consistently funny and with well-realized stunt sequences, XXX still isn't as satifying as the previous Cohen-Diesel outing. More ambitious, sure, though its ambition is chiefly defined as a calculated appeal to the moviegoing demographic that recognizes cameos by Tony Hawk and/or Eve when they see them. (Nothing wrong with that, I don't think - I hope I live to see the day when references to skateboarding, hip-hop, Rammstein and Orbital seem as over-the-hill as the tuxedo-and-martini sensibility of your typical James Bond film.) But there's nothing in Rob Cohen's style that really takes advantage of the larger scope and locations that he's working with. Worse, the collective wad gets shot early, dotting the first half-hour of the film with a series of quick action set-pieces that set an impossible pace. The intent, presumably, was to ape the Bond series, which always stages a trademark action scene before the opening credits. While that's an interesting strategy, and you could argue that it keeps a young audience happy by amping them up right out of the gate, I prefer action movies that build slowly toward their wild, orgasmic conclusions. Instead, XXX starts off with stunts involving impossible heights and airborne motorcycles and then powers its way toward a depressingly bland conclusion involving a goofy submarine contraption menacing Prague.

(What on earth did movie critics do before we had the Internet? Rather than making an unfairly reductive judgment on the career of screenwriter Rich Wilkes myself, I'm going to point you toward his filmography at IMDb and let you supply your own glib comment.)

Despite the shortcomings-mainly its slavish adherence to the Bond formula as a gold standard - XXX performs pretty much as advertised. Cohen fills his movie with outrageous stunts and pretty girls, and one all-too-brief scene depicting Diesel hanging at a party with his posse has the same urban multicultural thrum that suffused The Fast and the Furious. You'll never feel like you're watching real people in real danger, but of course that's not the point. The highlights are Diesel's growling delivery of his one-liners, the frankly preposterous extreme action sequences, and, arguably most importantly, the pleasant buzz of vaguely reckless abandon. Though Rob Cohen is a 50-something Harvard grad, he's managed to make a movie that takes tattoos, skateboard culture, heavy metal and techno music as a given. You could accuse him of being a cynical trend-glommer, riding on Diesel's coattails in a bid for hip credibility, but on the evidence I'd argue that he's genuinely interested in a mission of revitalizing the big action tentpole by investing it with younger ideas. About time someone tried that.