XXX

Xander Cage (Diesel) is an extreme sports hero and an outlaw. He has a bad attitude and worse habits - or is that bad habits and a worse attitude? He steals computer chips and does things like driving stolen cars off bridges, saying 'it' s only a Corvette.' After tracking him down, the NSA drug him and take him to blow stuff up for them in Mexico.

Believe me when I tell you that XXX is much, much sillier than it sounds. But it careers from explosion to motor cycle leap to sky surfing to fight scene that you never get a chance to reflect on the plot holes, cliches and really, really poor dialogue. It's a film so in love with its own coolness that it doesn't have to make sense.

My favourite insane plot point is the villainÕs super weapon, a speedboat with poison gas. Terrifying, except that his lair is in a hollowed-out mountain in landlocked Czeckoslovakia. Where are you going Mr Bad Guy? Down the Danube to bump off the Viennese? In the end he decides to attack Prague - in which case, he could have put the poison gas cannisters in the back of his Trabant and driven into town to wreak evil.

Diesel makes a fantastic hero. He's gruff, monosyllabic, fit and looks good in Stussy (what every good undercover agent is wearing these days, dontchaknow). He was wandering around Sundance a few years back, telling anyone who would listen that he was going to be a big star. now he's going to be busy saying 'I told you so' a lot: XXX is undoubtedly the start of a new franchise.

Nobody involved in the film can have seen the Austin Powers films, as they seen to take all the spy movie cliches very seriously. And a good job they do: dubbed 'James Bond for the X Box generation', XXX is two hours of unmissable, ultra cool boom, boom, BOOM, BOOM silliness.

Anthony Bridgerton