By

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

The fast and the absurd

This is the kinetic, frenetic and moronic action franchise that Vin Diesel turns to when he’s not busy making deeper, more important films like the Fast and Furious turkeys. This slapdash, noisy mess, a vague and clueless critique of the NSA, offers little we haven’t seen before and better done. I didn’t much like it, but I’m not twelve, and I guess it depends on your taste for slam-bam spectacle over, well, anything else. A bored-looking Toni Collette should be ashamed for her uncharacteristically flat performance here. There are jokes, too, of a sort. But most of the funny stuff is unintentional (107 min).