REVIEWED - XXX 2: THE NEXT LEVEL: Whatever else you may say about this cacophonous sequel to an unlovely 2002 Vin Diesel action flick, you couldn't call it slow, writes Donald Clarke

In the time it takes most films to clear their throats, we learn bad news about the original xXx - "Xander Cage was killed in Bora Bora". We see the beginnings of a right-wing plot to overthrow the US government, we are introduced to Ice Cube, the next algebraically pseudonymed super agent, and we witness Samuel Jackson, an underling-chewing security chief, blown into angry little pieces. Then the pace picks up. Featuring dialogue composed entirely of terse warnings and summaries of the technical specifications of motorcars, the picture careers nauseatingly rapidly towards a literal and figurative train wreck.

It's terrible, but it is damn efficient.

Two things are worth noting. The film is, by the standards of such enterprises, bracingly left-wing: mad Defence Secretary Willem Dafoe might be seen as an even scarier version of Donald Rumsfeld. Secondly, it features more celebrity slumming than any other picture this year. Stop and think, Messrs Cube, Dafoe and Jackson. You, along with respected director Lee Tamahori, are all participating in a project that Vin Diesel saw fit to decline.