“XXX: Barbershop 3”

The new movie “XXX: State of the Union” is easily the best action film of all time.

Step aside, Jet Li. Your lighting fast moves have nothing on the massive movement of Ice Cube as he scowls. Bruce Willis? Sylvester Stallone? Jackie Chan? All these punks would be blown away by the tubby Cube and his conveniently perfect ninja moves.

This movie plays out just like a very unimaginative 12-year-old’s fantasy of what life as a secret agent would be like. As a matter of fact, I think the scriptwriter could not have been older than 14, or he could not have captured that juvenile invincibility in implausible daydreamed fantasies so well.

If you never saw the first “XXX,” don’t worry. You don’t need any bothersome “prologue” or “plot” in your way to watch this cinematic masterpiece. Ice Chubs has been in prison for a while, but he used to be a badass Navy SEAL. His old commander, Samuel L. Jackson (who seems to have blunted his acting abilities in order to fit in with the low-caliber talent) comes to bust him out.

Since Chubs has been in the slammer for a while, he needs some of what he didn’t get in prison-if you know’ahm sayin. Fries. And a shake. He deprecatingly tosses off the idea of poontang in favor of grub throughout the whole movie.

Ice Chubs’ frequent denial of one base pleasure for another is a part of the character development strategy that made the “Friday” trilogy so enthralling, and so necessary for film students the world over. Thankfully, he has honed this unique character strategy in “XXX” so that we all may learn from his mastery of the acting craft.

As an action hero, Ice Chubs is un-credible. He is always conveniently near the circuit breakers, so he can turn off the electricity and throw off his enemies. He always finds an eminently clever solution to problems that most action heroes would not even know existed. He seems to psychically know when the guys chasing him have infrared scopes and when they do not, when they are capable of giving chase on foot or on water, and exactly what angle to turn the speedboat so it can launch up a conveniently placed ramp onto a suspension bridge.

There are many shots of Chubs walking calmly past explosions of his own creation, while the helpless peons fall all around him, powerless to do anything to stop him, like shoot him.

Willem Defoe has a flawless plan. As Secretary of Defense, he will assassinate everyone between him and the throne, including the president. But a flaw in the flawless plan is found in our chubby hero. When his assassination plot begins to crumble, Defoe takes the president and runs and for some unknown reason, does not kill him, like a true action villain. For the last half hour of the movie, we are blissfully freed from anything resembling “character motivation” so that we can have an exciting action sequence instead.

The best part of this juvenile movie is all the hot cars. And all the hot girls working on the hot cars. If you have always secretly known in your heart that somewhere, in the heart of the city, there is a woman with a tube top and heels pushing a power sander into a fender, moaning slightly as the sparks fly all over her exposed skin, you were right. The chop-shop Chubs goes into is full of these auto-body babes, and their inclusion sets the tone for this fantasy world, where every female with lines to speak shows plenty of cleavage, and nobody is as badass as our fat hero.

The deadpan delivery of Wisconsin-grade cheese dialogue was so constant throughout the film that it was hard to tell if they left the pauses after these amazing lines for the audience to laugh or not. Unfortunately, the uncultured snobs I was in the theater with merely groaned at these opportune moments instead of absorbing the depth of lines such as “Freedom won’t be free for long.”

But this movie will be. They are giving tickets away by the fistful just to get people to watch it, and convince themselves that all the money invested in the explosions and hot cars won’t vanish like a burger thrown down Chubs’ gullet.