STATE OF THE UNION--NOW ICE CUBE'S GOTTA WET 'CHA

Toby Shavers (Michael Roof) is having problems adjusting to the new "X," Darius Stone (Ice Cube). He's bossy, belligerent, face typically snarling with tons of attitude. "I don't play with my life," Stone has already leveled with him. "I'd rather play with yours." Enough's enough. "You know X," Toby retorts at one point, "I'm really starting to miss the old XXX."

Of course Toby may speak for a continent of one. As viewers learn early in XXX: STATE OF THE UNION with heartbreaking bluntness, Xander Cage, the "snowboarder, skater, and biker" cro-magnon turned National Security agent for hire embodied by Vin Diesel in the original "XXX" has been snuffed on assignment in Bora Bora. Naturally this is a crude means to explaining the absence of Diesel in the sequel, who jumped ship to ruin his "Pitch Black" franchise and play "Kindergarten Cop" in "The Pacifier," leaving a big action void and general air of incompetence in Augustus Gibbons' (Samuel L. Jackson) NSA. When Gibbons and Toby barely escape with their lives in STATE OF THE UNION's opening, in which the underground NSA complex is breached by rogue operatives, they must turn to a new agent to restore order to American security. Enter Stone.

And enter relentless mayhem. Written by Simon Kinberg and directed by Lee Tamahori, who very nearly sucked whatever life remained in the Bond franchise with "Die Another Day," XXX: STATE OF THE UNION is a big, loud, incalculably stupid action epic with a "plot" so vapid it merely serves as a tattered roadmap to stage more destruction (Behold the Capital getting ransacked by tanks!) as Darius collects kernels of info, glowering all the while in his quest to protect and to serve. Plausibility? Whatever! Tamahori's got demolition on the mind, choreographing his mindless, explosive set pieces to hard rock or hard rap like action porno. STATE OF THE UNION is like a horrific throwback to the thankfully laid to rest action days of "Commando" or "Cobra," where the stories were merely sexless accommodations for the stars to plug as many bad guys as possible, chewing through bad one liners as orgasmic release after sending someone to an untimely death. Having said that, STATE OF THE UNION does offer a few laughs, but usually at its own expense, as if deliberately referencing how bad it is.

When we meet Darius, he's in a maximum security prison. A former lieutenant in Gibbons' covert ops unit, he doesn't like to be reminded of his past. "Don't call me lieutenant," he hisses at Gibbons. "I'm inmate 3655, now." Gibbons offers Darius the now vacant position of XXX. He accepts. Maximum security? No problem. Darius busts free with supernatural ease, dispatching armed cops like boy scouts and scaling the detention roofs like Spiderman before leaping off the roof to catch a perfectly timed chopper piloted by Gibbons, flying by that very instant.

Hiding out in DC in the super upscale auto shop of former gal pal Lola (Nona Gaye, any personality regulated to her heaving bosoms barely contained by skimpy outfits), Darius is able to put together the pieces of an elaborately nefarious plot. War hawk secretary of defense George Octavius Deckert (Willem Dafoe), a former general of Gibbons' who's very conveniently responsible for Darius' incarceration, has latched on to a fool proof plan to whack lame duck, blue state President James Sanford (Peter Strauss) along with most of the cabinet at the State of the Union Address. If it's supposed to be January, nobody dresses like its winter and the sun is unseasonably shining like Spring. With the help of Toby, Lola, NSA agent Kyle Steele (Scott Speedman) who comes to believe in Darius' claims, and car jack extraordinaire Zeke (Xzibit), Darius is able to put the outlandish kibosh on Deckert's unbelievable plans to ascend to the presidency (Since when did mainstream action films have unhappy endings?).

Yes, singularly preposterous. Luckily, Ice Cube has more artificially gruff personality than action peon Diesel, although it's unintentionally hilarious to see Cube go Neo in the action sequences. To his credit, there's a fabulously absurd sequence where Darius commandeers a boat and somehow crashes it on a bridge to extricate foolhardy Toby, stuck in a police checkpoint. To see Cube walking in slo motion with a typically steely "You want some?" gaze on his glowering kisser before getting in the car and driving away to safety, is wickedly crowd pleasing. He's an untouchable caricature, at the end of the day more at home with fries and a shake than the prospect of butt numbing sex with a glamorous, hussy accomplice of Deckert's (Sunny Mabrey).

One of the screaming ironies of STATE OF THE UNION is that Diesel preferred an empty, family friendly venture to clean up his image than have another go at Xander the xenolith. Now here's Cube, having softened his gangsta rap image (He makes Jay-Z and 50 Cent look like rapping smurfs) with restrained, crowd friendly projects like "Barbershop" and "Are We There Yet?" getting in touch with his "Predator" roots with a vengeance ("She set me up...b-tch!"). As an asskicking, government superspy Cube is a trifle more convincing than Paul Reubens, but ridiculous all the same. "The fate of the free world is in the hands of hustlers and thieves!" What possible motives can a bloke like Darius have for donning the XXX moniker, other then for the chance to blow rubbish up? As he lays the gauntlet for Zeke, seeking help in a speech crafted in pools of thug lunacy, "Don't do it for the red, white and blue! Do it for yourself! Do it for the right to hack and jack outside the White House!" Moronic.

Besides the laughable action (Check out Cube plowing a hundred sixty miles per hour on train tracks in one of Lola's hybrids after an emergency, fictional getaway locomotive carrying Deckert and the president) and Nona Gaye's plumy, protruding breasts, STATE OF THE UNION sprinkles social commentary throughout that comes off as nonsensical camp but should provoke guilty laughs. Charlie (Mabrey), Deckert's blond, gorgeous demoiselle in crime gets fitted with cleavage bearing dresses and this clunker: "Growing up around DC politics is like living in a snakepit." There's also Darius verbally waylaying an NRA constituent with this nugget: "Stop buying country music, stop burning crosses and stop shooting black folks." Finally there's the president himself, preaching global compassion as a means to a diplomatic end (A forced dig at the current administration), confronting the weasel Deckert with "Are you familiar with the word treason?"

STATE OF THE UNION is like cinematic treason for nonplussed viewers who command even the slightest iota of probability in films. It's extravagantly dumbed down (Darius and Agent Steele get the lowdown on the assassination plot a few days before the address and you know who they tell? Nobody!) and squeaks at a breakneck pace so that viewers may miss the San Andreas Fault sized holes in the plot, lethargic writing, and ridiculous characters. Vin Diesel may just be a genius after all.