How do you top extreme macho bombast?

MORE EXTREME MACHO BOMBAST!

That's the philosophy that propels most violent, explosive, over- the-top action movies and their sequels these days. Seldom is the formula followed with such numbing, mindless wantonness than in XXX: State of the Union, the super-butch follow-up to 2002's Vin Diesel-fueled XXX.

With Diesel off perfecting his babysitting skills in The Pacifier the franchise-tenders were left to find a replacement to star in this preposterous cartoon about gangs and ex-cons saving democracy from rabid, runaway bureaucrats.

And so they settled on Ice Cube, the canny rapper-turned-actor who possesses a scowl to match Diesel's but also tops his predecessor in acting chops and likeability quotient.

Of course, acting and likeability are hardly high on the list of job requirements for assignments like this (witness the one-note performances and wasted thespian talents of heavyweight co-stars Samuel L. Jackson and Willem Dafoe).

But Ice Cube also possesses the necessary degree of street cred and macho bluster to carry off the action anti-hero role with aplomb.

Briefly, the story informs us that Diesel's extreme-sports spy op Xander Cage, a.k.a. XXX, has been unceremoniously killed somewhere in Bora Bora. So when his silky intelligence handler Augustus Gibbons (Jackson) finds himself the target of a murderous coup, which he suspects is the work of devious Defense Secretary Deckert (Dafoe), he's forced to search for a suitably off-the-grid replacement.