XXX

Ad copy, sometimes, is instructive. XXX advertises its alpha-male hero as "A New Breed of Secret Agent," a line that harkens back to the days of blaxploitation. Only more shamelessly. It refers to star Vin Diesel's biracial identity (and, subliminally, to All-American miscegenation). Diesel plays Xander Cage, a nod to action-movie whore Nicolas Cage, while also embodying a swarthy 007 persona. He flexes for today's teen audiences who, apparently, have lost the gift of vicarious pleasure. They can only identify with images resembling themselves. That means approving Diesel's role as XXX, an extreme sports star whose underground, downloadable videos of car thefts and life-threatening stunts make him an icon for those Internet teens who long for something-anything-that seems antiestablishment, singular, reckless, yet familiar.

Initially, this looks like a good thing. Xander's a potent, fearless, enviable stud. And in light of the Times' "Arts and Leisure" section recently sucking up to stolid Harrison Ford for his white "American Face," Diesel's lead in XXX appears openminded, socially aware. XXX's director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) wants only to exploit audiences' ethnic consciousness-especially teens trained to respond to action figures from Bruce Lee to Bruce Willis. In part, it's Cohen's recognition of the powerlessness so many working-class Americans feel. And if a little Jewish-or black-aggression enters into the mix, so much the better. The clincher is that Xander is recruited by the National Security Agency, which wants to prevent Eastern European/Russian nationals from detonating biological weapons of mass destruction. Yet, no matter how preposterous Xander/Diesel's enlistment (it's the ethnic-outsider's dream of government acceptance), he at least seems one of us-as opposed to one of them. But by showing Xander acting out his ethnic audacity, XXX suggests that racism can be overcome by rugged individualism. That heroism knows no color.

Consider his moniker, "Vin Diesel"-a recognition of his birth name Mark Vincent and a brazen suggestion of the hiphop appellation "cock-diesel." Tumescence, hardness, masculinity, strength. Not for nothing does he get love scenes with Asia Argento, daughter of the horror-film specialist Dario Argento, who submits to Xander's seduction with the rank availability of a Rocco Siffredi porn actress. Vin Diesel is using our culture's subconscious racial/sexual fantasies to his advantage and to the mainstream's delight. His ascension coincides with that of the biracial gay porn actor who wears a "Black" and "White" tattoo on either pec and goes by the historically loaded name Dred Scott. These performers are the vanguard of a cultural deconstruction-a confrontation-that's waiting to happen. You know already that Halle Berry's participation in the next James Bond opus won't challenge convention to the same extent that a "half-black" man does when he's kicking the shit out of white men and laying pipe to white women. The makers of XXX apply their knowingness (and box-office savvy) just as pornmakers do, without showing the way to liberation or political consciousness. Fact is, as Xander is portrayed, he isn't so much a character as an emanation of a cultural secret. And now that the secret is out Diesel (a Newsweek magazine icon, a $20 million Hollywood asset) achieves unprecedented industry triumph. He's the movies' first truly All-American action hero.

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In American History X, Edward Norton played a muscled-up neo-Nazi, disclosing the racist indoctrination common to Hollywood's tight-muscled movie protagonists. But Vin Diesel reveals that movie heroism today is less a matter of valor than of multicolored, personal, recognizable drive. The 1967 Donovan song "Mellow Yellow" introduces Diesel in a diner where he is tested by NSA operatives. (It's a bald allusion to his skin-and turns into a hipster reference to Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.) The diner scene features Sam Jackson as Xander's NSA mentor, adding more grotesquerie-even a facial scar-to Jackson's already bizarre black-ethnic image. From there on, Diesel in XXX pledges to give audiences the kick of a James Bond movie while adding to it the pleasure of ethnic pride.

Rooting for Vin Diesel isn't the same as rooting for Eminem. There's no petulance in the alienation Diesel portrays. He smiles more than scowls; wastes no time resenting the racially blended, commercially co-opted New World Order. His hero-characters (in Boiler Room, Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious) are skeptics yet know an opportunity when they see it. Diesel holds the hopes of an audience that's been stunted by commercial formula yet is still optimistic. It's an apolitical generation that can use Clinton's "three strikes and you're out" policy (the government ploy that traps Xander Cage) as the basis for entertainment rather than a reason to revolt. The title's triple X's refer to last-chance, all-out aggression channeled into fun.

It's strange when a woman (the rapper Eve) says of Xander, "He hasn't sold out." Why wouldn't a rebel like Xander join up with his first adventure's Colombian drug lords and oppose the American system in the same spirit as when he steals an exec's luxury auto? What is that "He hasn't sold out" line for, except to flatter today's unruly youth as politically rebellious! In XXX, Xander/Diesel skateboards, moto-crosses, shoots down, decimates anyone who stands in the way of his high life. The film's plot is similar to the silly politics of Chris Rock's Bad Company and Matt Damon's The Bourne Identity, where Europe is used-trashed-as a playground for juvenile American males. What's more interesting is the way XXX fuses inchoate consumerism with patriotism. There's no pretense that the country (and its boldest young men) now stands for anything besides self-satisfaction. You may cheer or jeer, but you can't argue.

Vin Diesel barely challenges cultural stereotype. He fits in on a couple levels: suggesting the comic strip character Henry, an innocuous bald-headed innocent, but now on steroids. Diesel speaks the script's witlessisms in a hard voice. (Before bedding a whore, he confesses, "The things I'm gonna do for my country!") He jolts a colleague, saying, "Stop thinking police and start thinking PlayStation." This isn't manly certitude but the demands of an overgrown child. Rob Cohen has made a James Bond movie for the generation less inclined to fantasize about sex and the Cold War than about toggle-stick and keypad manipulation. Nothing in XXX matches The Fast and the Furious' ice cream-colored cars gleaming in the California sunlight or its illuminated dragsters tearing across freeways in the neon night, but Cohen's craft has become even more happily functional. He has no panache-the thing that separates Walter Hill from the Bruckheimer boys-but with nearly every action sequence and elaborate stunt, he sets out to top himself. Cobbling together derring-do and f/x, he brandishes a ridiculous/joyous sequence of Diesel snowboarding on an avalanche. Bidding to be James Cameron, Cohen's "Lookit!" antics come closer to Renny Harlin-nifty.

Don't buy the credo Diesel told Time: "I support the idea of being multicultural primarily for all the invisible kids, the ones who don't fit into one ethnic category and then find themselves lost in some limbo." That's just marketing talk. The only limbo kids fall into is pop culture. And throughout this film, Diesel defends a toy-store assortment of youthful distractions-heavy metal, rap, extreme sports, car culture and videogames. "It's the only education we got!" he shouts to an oafish, conservative politician. If so, it ought to result in wittier entertainment than this. As a functionary of the ethnic teen audience that grows up on a diet of action movies, Diesel should bring some ideas to trash-or at least some connoisseurship. Cohen keeps XXX harmlessly busy, but Diesel needs to work with better filmmakers-especially dialogue-writers who can stop police with sharper retorts than, "Okay, I'll turn the music down." Unless Diesel elevates the action film-or imagines the virtue of biraciality-that XXX tattooed on the back of Xander Cage's neck will make him indistinguishable from any other Hollywood sack of flour. (Note to Quentin Tarantino: Vin Diesel is the star-the possible redemption-you've dreamed for.)