XXX: State of the Union

The original Secret Agent XXX (Vin Diesel) apparently has been killed off somewhere between the first film and this sequel, so the new XXX is an escaped con (Ice Cube) who once served with Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson, back for more), working to foil a plot to seize the government during the State of the Union address. Ice Cube has glowering fun with the outlandish contrivances of Simon Kinberg’s logic-challenged script, gamely going along with the slam-bang gusto of Lee Tamahori’s direction. It starts out OK, with a nifty raid on Jackson’s headquarters, but a movie this essentially leaden can’t float forever, and it becomes just another digitally generated audience endurance test. The climactic shootout, making a shambles of the U.S. Capitol, has an unsettling air of guilty wish fulfillment.