Rarely have I seen a film as focused on its demographic as xXx.  It kicks off with a spy modelled on James Bond who finds himself out of place at a Rammstein gig: so much so that the dinner jacketed misfit is killed there.  Whoops.  Time for another approach.  Which is where Vin Diesel comes in: a snowboarding, paragliding, jivetalking badass perfect for a generation wired into video games and with no attention span…he even has the film’s title tattooed into the back of his neck should you forget it in the excitement of communicating the rush of xXx to a pal.

Vin plays Xander Cage, who is, like, totally awesome: he even has a skateramp built into his loft apartment, and seems to make a living by thumbing his nose up to The Man with feats of derring-do that get streamed onto his website.  Only, for a film of this sort to work we need the conflict that comes from having him work for The Man, in the form of Samuel L Jackson, here representing the National Security Agency.

While the film is all kinetic energy and high-octane music it works well: you can imagine an audience moshing to it.  And if it maintained that momentum things would be fine — but that formula was perfected by The Bourne Trilogy.  Here, despite the tautness, there are still periods of slack, and the writing and performances aren’t enough to make those as compelling as the frenzied stuff.

Problem is, once xXx has got the thing with the target audience sussed, and reinforced with periodic references to punk lyrics and bad guys with dreadlocks, it’s a standard espionage thriller.  A group of Russian dudes called Anarchy 99 have nefarious plans involving a solar powered submarine and its lethal payload, our man Xander gets to stop them using his martial prowess and gravelly asides.

Along the way, Xander realises that there really is more to life than extreme sports and poledancers: maybe this patriotisim deal really means something, see?  Which is a shame; there was a touch of Michael Moore about Xander at the start of the film, and he’s more Roger Moore by the end.  Now there’s a thought: a radical action hero acting against big corporations and standing for social justice…hmm.

It’s all crystallised in the line that signals the end of the second act: “I’ve risked my life for a lot of stupid reasons: this is the first one that makes sense to me.”  Cue Xander rallying the troops for a full-on assault on a castle: what fun!  Leaping out of a plane on a snowboard to a nu-metal soundtrack has never seemed so meaningful: no wonder the American Army is enthused about video games as a means of propaganda.

It’s all such fun that I was laughing aloud, and sometimes applauding, what happened onscreen.  There are times when cinema is all about adrenalin,and xXx is one of the more successful films at delivering that heightened state, not as gleefully self-aware as Crank but livelier than Mr Bond’s recent outings.  Judge whether that’s a good thing or not by your mood: each provides the Recommended Daily Allowance of high-action hokum.