Diesel's action vehicle feels like it runs on sputtering two-stroke rather than high-performance four-star.

Sean Vetter (Diesel) and his partner Demetrius Hicks (Tate) have finally nailed Baja drugs cartel kingpin Memo Lucero (Silva) after seven years on the job.

With Memo safely incarcerated inside a Californian prison, Sean can return to his candle-making wife and an idyllic life in his Pacific beach-house.

However, the vacuum left by Memo is quickly filled by a vicious mystery cocaine lord, who is only known in awe as 'Diablo'.

He quickly makes his mark by killing Sean's wife in a botched assassination attempt, and this makes the plump narc very angry indeed.

Fuelled by vengeance, the wild widower and Demetrius find themselves on the wrong side of the law as they seek out to destroy Diablo.

The drugs scene portrayed by Gray is not the meticulously observed underworld of Traffic but a powder-drenched place ideally suited to the Homepride flour-graders.

Everyone packs a piece and drives a sexy car if they can't run to a Lear jet, while women are either loyal familial backbones or decorative lap-dancers.

"I let my emotions take over," concedes Sean, as he surveys a car-park full of torched vehicles and bullet-riddled corpses.

Please understand now, these are not the 'emotions' of The Hours...but Sean's knee-jerk reaction to anyone perceived as a nasty piece of work.

As his initials would suggest, Vin is one of those maverick anti-heroes that pops up again when you think he's been beat.

It's a bit daft, with the comedic highlight a wisecracking killer hairdresser - think a tooled-up Vidal Sassoon packing a chrome magnum.

However, the tongue-firmly-in-cheek that made xXx a bearable actioner is missing from this lame-brainer, which tends to take itself a bit seriously.

"You have no idea what kind of mistake you are making," Memo tells Sean after the cuffs are slapped on him.

The same could be applied to those queuing for this half-witted hokum.

Tim Evans