XXX is exactly what it seems to be: James Bond for short attention spans, and o less fun for that. This high-gloss pile driver cares nothing for haracter, buildup or wit, just the next thrill, the next babe, the next hance for star Vin Diesel to bust his ass on a stunt. XXX will be huge, and ouble that for Diesel. The guy talks like he gargles with glass, but he's a ynamite screen presence. How's his acting? Sheesh. Acting would only get in he way.

Diesel plays Xander Cage, an extreme-sports athlete recruited by National Security Agency biggie Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) to infiltrate a Russian gang in Prague. Led by Yorgi (Marton Csokas) and his lover Yelena (Asia Argento), the gang is bent on — what else? — destroying the world.

Xander has no training to stop them. He previously spent his days pulling such stunts as stealing a senator's Corvette, base-jumping the car off a bridge and selling the video for a quick buck. Agent Gibbons tests Xander further by dropping him into a Colombian cocaine plantation, from which Xander escapes on a motorbike while dodging helicopter gunfire. "I live for this shit," says Xander, which just about sums up the appeal of this movie. In Prague, Agent Xander — now christened Triple X for the trio of X's tattooed on the back of his neck — finds more trouble, including a fling with Yelena, who comes at him in spike-heeled boots, sticks her tongue down his throat, asks him if he likes it and then tells him that's all he's going to get. Argento, bless her, gives the role a slinky, teasing perversity rare in PG-13 movies. But even after Xander beds a more available babe ("The things I'm gonna do for my country," he quips 007-style) it's clear that sex isn't the fuel driving the script by Rich Wilkes (The Jerky Boys: The Movie). Action is, and director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) loads the film with pow: Xander surfing down a banister on a tray, Xander snowboarding down a mountain in front of an avalanche. There's even Xander facing the ultimate terror given his intellectual capacity: a rehearsal of Don Giovanni at the Prague State Opera. "That's cruel and unusual," he tells Gibbons. It's hard to hate a movie, even one this droolingly crass, that knows how to laugh at itself.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."