xXx: Critic Reviews

Vin may not yet be a Bond, or a Terminator, or even Conan the Barbarian. But he's got presence and charisma.

The director piles on one expensive but impersonal action scene after another.

Vin Diesel, every teen's fantasy action hero.

As an action director, Mr. Cohen is competent, but this film -- which is pretty much as non-stop as an action movie can get -- needed a director with a little more finesse.

If Dubya and Dick Cheney had made their very own post-9/11 patriotic propaganda movie for the teens they need as globalisation fodder, then this would be it.

Not since the days when Joel Silver ruled Hollywood and musclebound subliterates vied for supremacy on the big screen has the industry spawned a phenomenon as garish and confounding as Vin Diesel.

Okay, that's it. My summer of movies has been completely pissed on.

Cohen's brainless bombast proves to be a perfect fit for this shamelessly, deliciously ridiculous reinvention of James Bond-style spy shenanigans.

XXX seems like a missed opportunity -- not a commercial one, mind you, because the flick will no doubt make a mint -- but as an honest-to-goodness re-evaluation of spy flicks and their relevancy to an ever more youthful audience.

really just boring

XXX is a dream role for an action star, and ... Diesel is the perfect man for the job.

The filmmakers are so intent on bludgeoning their audience into submission that after 10 minutes you've become numb.

XXX happily wallows in the fact that it's 100-percent loopy, kinetic and silly.

The wondrous opening sequence was better than any Bond film, and things were looking up until the characters started talking.

Sporadically entertaining, this is nevertheless seriously hampered by a very choppy screenplay.

Bond-inspired? Certainly. Likely to have decades of life as a classic movie franchise? Let's hope not.

For an action-packed, brain-dead testosterone fest, I have to admit Rob Cohen's XXX isn't that bad.

A thrilling ride with plenty of style and lots of unbelievability.

A PlayStation game come to life, XXX is a movie almost exclusively dependent on the special effects department and the charm of its leading man, Vin Diesel. But it's sound and fury signifying nothing.

It may be stupid, but it knows it's stupid, although it definitely drags in the middle and could have done with being twenty minutes shorter.

None of this has the suavity or classical familiarity of Bond, but much of it is good for a laugh. The problem with "XXX" is that its own action isn't very effective.

I think Diesel is a movie star-in-the-making: He's got the shape and glare of an early Stallone.

It's dumb fun slapped silly, a new franchise inspired by the Bond films that's not far from the porn its title promises; the film is a veritable orgy of outrageous stunts.

Mr. Diesel may have the body of a thug, but his face betrays a vulnerability that makes him an unusually human action hero, like a teddy bear on steroids.

Determinedly XTrEmE SPoRtz!(tm)...and really, isn't that a little 1994?