Caliente

Looking for action? 'XXX' marks the spot

Now that Arnold is a governor, Sly shills reality TV and the names Van Damme and Seagal are punch lines rather than top lines, the movies are in dire need of an action-flick infusion. The man with the power tools may just be Ice Cube, star of "XXX: State of the Union." He's got big guns, a nasty ghetto-raised demeanor and a snide quip for every snarling enemy he dispatches. And then there are the intangibles. Hails of oncoming bullets seem to mysteriously avoid the guy as if he were the dentist's office. The buildings and tanks he approaches seem to explode on their own, as if to save him the trouble and simply defer to his awesomeness. Ah, yeah. "State of the Union" is a flick of the action old-school. Don't call it a "film" or "cinema." It's a flick through and through, made to be experienced while chomping popcorn and washing down the Hot Tamales stuck to the roof of your mouth with a $10 soda. The movie appears to have employed a Super Nintendo as its screenwriter, and it boasts all the elegance and character development of a "Transformers" episode. Lee Tamahori, directing by joystick, keeps the action flying furious and fast, surrounding his Tupac-quoting star with a hurricane of splashy, if derivative, B-movie constructs. We've got secret missions, femmes fatale, improbable rooftop chases and gung-ho infiltrations. And trash talk - loads and loads of trash talk. Ice Cube is convict Darius Stone, a former special ops agent who is recruited by covert commander Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) to be the new secret agent code-named XXX. Stone grudgingly agrees, to get out of the clink, and only after commenting that the moni-ker "sounds like a porno star." Don't worry if you never saw the original "XXX" flick. "State of the Union" isn't exactly the kind of sequel that requires much backstory to understand. The only acknowledgment of the first film is a throwaway line to address that the last XXX, played by Vin Diesel, died. In fact, if you've ever seen any action movie from the 1980s, you'll know exactly what's going on at all times, and exactly where it's going. The formula is only the roll cage for this Ice Cube vehicle, fueled by the star's raw tenacity and plenty of funny lines. It's perfectly easy to spot the villain immediately. Somehow that crafty Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) has weaseled his way into the post of secretary of defense. He wants to use his secretly recruited army to kill the president during his speech, and scoffs when someone tells him the newly minted XXX is after him. "He's just one man," he snarls. And that's where he's wrong, because Ice Cube is far more than just one man. He's the total embodiment of the action stars of the past, of macho cheese and glances that freeze. He's an army of one, and for us popcorn-chompers, an army of fun.