Is it useless to say that a XXX movie is stupid? There have been a lot of good movies with absurd plots and outrageous characters. There are even good stupid movies. Vin Diesel, who returns to the XXX franchise’s third entry after skipping out on the second, has been in stupid good movies with absurd plots and outrageous characters. XXX: The Return of Xander Cage is stupid but it’s ferocious and relentless in its stupidity. It’s a thoroughly bad film.

I’m certain that there is at least one person in the world who is convinced of Vin Diesel’s charm and charisma, and that’s Vin Diesel. I’m yet to be understand the secret of his appeal, which may just be one of the crucial reasons why I didn’t enjoy XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. In the similarly ludicrous but comparably superior Fast and Furious films, Diesel’s dreary and unpleasant screen presence is masked by the ensemble cast. The Return of Xander Cage is very Diesel centric, and there’s always the sense that it’s because Diesel wanted it that way.

There’s an unflattering degree of self-involvement here. Diesel’s Xander Cage is capable of the impossible. Woman want him, men want to be him and everyone around him tells him how incredible he is. Perhaps I was missing something, but Diesel simply isn’t the man that everyone was talking about. James Bond could make the most puerile double entendres ooze with charm. After sleeping with a horde of woman to gain important information (although neither the information nor the reason the women want to sleep with him remain unclear), Cage gleefully reveals to his superior that he went ‘under cover’ to get the intel and Diesel looks as happy as a schoolboy with the joke.

Diesel clearly wants Cage to be a quick-witted scoundrel with a heart of gold but the realities of Diesel’s acting capacity means that Cage is actually a dim-witted womaniser with a flabby sense of humour. Diesel is not necessarily without ability, but the films and roles that he chooses are entirely inappropriate for what he is able to bring to the table. You may, as I did, end up resenting Diesel for insisting that he’s something that he simply isn’t.

So, Xander Cage is back, and for the sake of giving a film the benefit of the doubt, we are happy that someone so self-involved, reckless and half-baked is responsible for the fate of the world. He is coaxed out of retirement, after the death of former colleague Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), by the new head of the xXx task force, Jane Marke (Toni Collette). A team of villains, headed by Xiang (Donnie Yen), have stolen a powerful weapon known as “Pandora’s Box“, which can control military satellites. But I’m wasting precious internet space. XXX: Return of Xander Cage doesn’t care about plot, so why should you.

Talents are wasted, particularly Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa, who are wonderful martial artists but have had their gifts subdued here in the name of making Diesel a credible opponent. Speaking of talent, at one point early on in the film, Cage rejects the assistance of a team of experienced soldiers by throwing them out of a plane and telling Marke that he wants to choose his own teammates. One of the team members he chooses is a talented DJ, and we’re offered no explanation as to why a DJ would be of any use in an espionage mission. In another scene, that very DJ (Kris Wu) uses his tunes to distract Cage’s assailants, saving our hero’s life. That’s the sort of crap that saturates the very lowest of spoof films.