Xander’s big adventure is full of non-surprises. He’s delivered to Prague with a fab fur-collared coat and sent undercover with a bad-guy group called Anarchy 99 (guess what they want), where he bonds with A99’s leader, an ex-Russian-secret-service-operative-turned-nearly-chortling-maniacal-villain named Yorgi (Marton Csokas) and Yorgi’s kohl-eyed girl Yelena (Asia Argento, who is a huge star in Italy, where her dad Dario is a renowned and much respected horror director). 

Yorgi’s large henchman is an extreme sports fan, which means he knows of and falls head over heels for Xander: Nothing like lughead bonding for easy macho jokes ("Is this guy gonna dry hump my leg?" Nyuk nyuk). Instantly, Yorgi takes X into his fold, though he holds off telling him the true meanness of his vision — he wants to send a computer-driven rocket-sub around the world, dropping off bits of biological weaponry (some killer gas called "Silent Night") and so, ensuring that the world’s nations will suspect and attack each other unto death. Hey! Didn’t Ben Affleck already thwart that plot this summer?

No surprise, he foils the plot, making use of fast motorcycles, exploding band-aids, a handgun that shoots darts of all types ("Set your faser on stun, Mr. Spock!"), a harpoon, a bazooka, a gorgeous GTO, and a stars-n-stripes parachute (and director Rob Cohen knows how to put a basic action sequence together, and to make it look fast). By the time he lets loose this last, Yelena is with him all the way, encouraging him with a hissy "Yes!" 

Also no surprise, Xander’s efforts to woo her ("You’re cold, intelligent, and vicious, but your eyes give you away") haven’t been motivated by much else than that he’s supposed to do it in a supposedly post-Bond flick that’s really just a Bond flick with an elaborately inked, strapping guy instead of tuxedoed, suave guy (in case you don’t get the symbolism, a spy of the Bondian persuasion is murdered, then tossed about in a Rammstein mosh pit at film’s start). And before he actually wins this cool customer over, he’s willing to do the Bond thing and bed an anonymous babe "for my country."

This notion of a country to which one might pledge allegiance would be quaint in a lot of spy movies (funny how prescient Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity looks now, 22 years later), except for that presently trendy patriotic fervor thing. XXX banks on that (appearing to be earnest in its rah-rahing) but also torques it, as Xander learns to "love" his country because he sees that death by biological contagion is a poor alternative. The film’s ideal audience is all over the po-mo contradictions here, happy to be sardonic and thrilled at the same time, then walk out and forget what they’ve seen.

This is what action movies are supposed to do, of course: Deliver brief, video-gamey, heart-assaulting excitement and then give way to the next installment in the franchise. The turnover is crucial. Xander understands that basic capitalistic impulse, deciding to take his country on its own deceptive, self-interested, and bottom-lining terms, as long as his country will pay him well, with a lot of expensive hardware and a trip to Bora-Bora. Such an outlook makes him the perfect secret agent for that country.

A trickier question arises when you consider Diesel, who, even if he isn’t actually riding his board down a mountain in front of an avalanche, is still implicated in the metaphor. Currently hailed — again and again — as this generation’s "new breed" of hero, a multicultural action star, Diesel both does and does not look the part. Check the cover of EW or GQ, where he’s staring you down or striding from a seeming wall of flames, and he most certainly looks like the most carefully muscled, self-satisfied tough guy to come down the Hollywood pike since Stallone. But check him on the talk show circuit, on TRL, Leno, Today or Live with Regis and Kelly, and he looks a little different, thoughtful and self-aware, even a bit shy.

This doesn’t mean he’s not talking lots about his enthusiastic stunt-doing and his friendship with Sam Jackson, forged in a sushi bar in Japan. It only means that his storytelling technique is charmingly quiet, less showy than awed. With Kelly on Thursday morning, he actually stopped mid-tale, hunched in his sleek black shirt, and smiled: "I’m having stage fright," he said, to everyone’s delight. For all the PR avalanche roaring around him, the guy knows how to work his moment.

If he had planned it, Diesel’s rise could not have been more dramatic, profitable or appropriate. Suddenly, Diesel (n”e Mark Vincent) is Mr. Multicultural. Time was, he discussed race as something more specific, or at least he addressed the politics of his character’s blackness, when talking with Today’s Soledad O’Brien about 2000’s Pitch Black. In David Twohy’s edgy SF-genre-buster, he played the prisoner-turned-reluctant savior Riddick (the titular subject of the upcoming sequel), whose disgust with "blue-eyed devils" was something of an issue. Now, playing Xander Cage, yet another prisoner-turned reluctant-savior, Diesel makes it a point not to answer questions about his or X’s self-identification.

To that end of perpetually performing unfixedness, apparently, he’s named his production company One Race, a point made repeatedly in the many articles about him. While the sentiment is likely noble, much like Tiger Woods’ self-designation rejects traditional race-based labels, it’s also a bit disingenuous. Race isn’t something to be owned or not according to your desire. More often than not, it’s applied. Colorblindness is an ideal, as yet far from a reality. A deeply meaningful social and political marker, race remains a means to community as well as to conflict. Race is also, sadly, a function of wealth — even if international spies and movie stars can reject its significance, most folks struggle daily to survive in cultures premised on that very significance.

Still, it’s clear enough that Diesel and The Rock are the future, and the Brosnans, Arnolds and Eastwoods are not. Much as XXX’s "multicultural hero" looks today like a cynical marketing campaign, it is through commercial culture that the world is changed. And the next installment is just around the corner.

Cynthia Fuchs, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and film & media studies at George Mason University, is the film/TV editor for PopMatters and film reviewer for Philadelphia Citypaper. Her reviews appear in PopPolitics each week.