As befits its title, XXX achieves a kind of generic purity in repeating its own hyperkinetic trailers for 90 minutes. Linking the appeal of their surprise hit The Fast and the Furious with this summer's infatuation with secret agents, director Rob Cohen and bullet-headed star Vin Diesel reunite for a sometimes jaw-dropping, mostly eye-numbing exercise in explosions and high-speed chases.

When yet another tuxedo'd agent gets iced in the investigation of Anarchy 99, a mafia-like cabal of ex-Soviet military out to rule the world, National Security Agency honcho Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson sporting a scar that looks like a week-old fried egg) decides it's time to enlist someone without "the stink of training," an amateur who's among "the best and the brightest of the scum of the earth." Xander Cage (Diesel), meanwhile, an extreme athlete with a subversive streak, is elaborately trashing the Corvette of a congressman who's out to ban raunchy rock lyrics and video games. The best moment in the film, it draws the attention of Augustus and company, who coerce Xander into serving his country as the film deteriorates into a litany of raunchy rock music and video-game-like stunts increasing in complexity, noise, and meaninglessness. Cohen and Diesel tap into an "alternative" culture of heavy metal, tattoos, and skateboarding and pit it against its logical extreme -- nihilists with weapons of mass destruction -- in a flag-waving product that discourages thinking, so I think it's safe to say we can look forward to an XXX II. (124 minutes) At the Apple Valley, Entertainment, Flagship, Holiday, Hoyts Providence 16, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.