This is what I know to be true: Vin Diesel is not cool.

When you think of Vin Diesel, you probably think of a less sophisticated time; an era of wallet chains on baggy cargo shorts, of Eminem singles, trucker hats and Punk’d. It doesn’t matter that he has made 120 films since 2001 (actual count: 19) because his cultural cachet was crystallised in a very specific context.

The idea of seeing a xXx film in 2017 seems absolutely ludicrous. This isn’t a film that has the capacity to change you nor is it a trendy blockbuster or fashionable indie. But I have news for you: somehow, in some way that defies everything I knew to be true about humans, the planet and men who insist on wearing mottled, beige fur coats in warm climates, xXx: Return Of Xander Cage is great. And somehow, somehow, it is cool.

Let’s examine this properly. Vin Diesel does things that shouldn’t be cool, and yet the things he relishes in are so deeply uncool that somehow they’re supremely cool. He’s anti-fashion. He doesn’t care that no one wears three-quarter denim pants and combat boots anymore, because he still does. It doesn’t bother him that the first xXx came out in 2002 and now that he’s 49, he doesn’t look as fly* on a skateboard specifically designed for the jungle (*he would still use the word ‘fly’).

Whether you try to deny it or not, Vin Diesel knows how to make cool movies and is perhaps one of the most actualised humans on planet Earth. There are three ingredients upon which his genius relies and they are also the reasons why xXx: Return of Xander Cage works beyond all reason: the perfect squad, the perfect action scene, and absolutely no focus on ‘motivations’ or ‘reality’ whatsoever.

Diesel Rule #1: The Perfect Squad

xXx: Return of Xander Cage is the third movie in the xXx series, the second starring Vin Diesel (his character faked his own death between the first and second films) and the first in the franchise to be directed by D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, I Am Number Four). You don’t need to have seen any other film in the series — or really, even be familiar with the narrative premise — to understand this film.

Toni Collette plays a CIA Agent called Jane Marke who enlists the help of former NSA spy and extreme sportsmen Xander Cage (Vin Diesel, obviously) to recover a device called ‘Pandora’s Box. This device has the power to crash satellites to hit specific locations and has been stolen by some slick thieves, including Xiang (Donnie Yen) and Serena (Deepika Padukone) who blow away several vaguely important men — Jane Marke explains “they took them out like it was Sunday brunch” — and the CIA needs someone with equally extreme skills to get it back.

Xander is initially reluctant to help the US government, even though he used to be part of a super secret ‘xXx program’ run by NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson). Now he’s secretly living in the Dominican Republic, skating through the jungle on skies (yes), high-fiving locals from moving cars like a much more extreme Superman and bedding beautiful women who disappear immediately after the bedding has been completed.

“Patriotism is dead,” Xander tells a very irritated Jane Marke. “There’s only rebels and tyrants now.” (After this line, many people in my theatre let out a low “weeeeeeew” sound and raised their eyebrows at each other — the Trump effect!) The classic blockbuster movie deal is offered –“We’ll scrap your criminal record! We’ll leave you alone forever!”– and suddenly, Xander Cage is back in the game.

Vin Diesel was the producer of the first and most recent xXx movies and of the last four Fast and the Furious films — the ones that seemed to elevate the franchise from a bunch of silly car movies to a bunch of commercially viable and critically beloved silly car movies. These series share several common threads; one being that they seem to heavily share aesthetics with Nelly videos, and another that they both boast effortlessly diverse casts.

Diesel has discussed the racial diversity in the Fast films extensively, and it appears to be something that he has an active hand in. “It doesn’t matter what nationality you are. As a member of the audience, you realise you can be a member of that ‘family’,’” he told Entertainment Weekly while promoting Furious 7. “That’s the beautiful thing about how the franchise has evolved.”

In Return of Xander Cage there’s a moment where Xander is handed a team of traditional blockbuster heroes, muscly operatives, trained army men who seem fairly bland, and he rejects them for his own team. Xander wants “extreme DJ” Nicks (Chinese pop star, Kris Wu), sharpshooter Adele (Ruby Rose) who hits on Jane Marke immediately, and ‘The Torch’ (Rory McCann from Game of Thrones) who just crashes cars a lot.

This may not seem like a very exciting squad, but that is precisely why they are. They are a dude who is primarily used to create diversions with his ability to pick the perfect banger, a heavily-tattooed queer women who is first seen shooting tranquilisers at a very blonde family trying to hunt a lion, and a kind of old guy in a trilby hat. ‘Maybe if I get a trilby hat, I could be in that squad,’ you might think to yourself in the theatre. They are the most adorable and unlikely crime-fighting team in existence.

It also helps that the people they are chasing — at a jungle rave, no less — are intimidatingly cool baddies; the kind you can’t help but root for. If you like Donnie Yen in Rogue One, you will love him in this – it’s easy to see why he’s such a huge star in Hong Kong (and frankly Meryl, it looks like mixed martial arts can actually be art). Deepika Padukone — who is incidentally one of the highest paid actors in the world — does more with her ‘hot enemy girl’ part than most Bond girls. And what can I even say about Tony Jaa?

It doesn’t even matter which team you’re going for, because each team is perfect.

Diesel Rule #2: The Perfect Action Sequence

The cartoon violence in Return of Xander Cage doesn’t have real-world repercussions, which is either great or deeply irresponsible depending on where you sit. If you can call shooting and punching silly, then the action in this is very silly.

Vin Diesel, like his cast mate and marketing stunt enemy The Rock, appears in huge, shameless set pieces in which he shoves people down airplane toilets, breaks guns in half to impress gangsters in straw trilby hats (there are so many trilby hats in this movie; it’s the most 2003 movie to have accidentally been released in 2017) and plays with grenades.

Vin Diesel is like a comic book superhero before they got serious — he gives you dumb stuff to cheer about and acts in a manner in which you never really have to question his morality. There’s something in our DNA, some sort of evolutionary occurrence, that makes us happy when we see a martial arts master kickboxing a foe while in a plane that is plummeting to the ground, or when you see two elite and EXTREME female fugitives turn back-to-back and stare down their enemies. I don’t know why this stuff feels good, but it just does.

The best thing about it is that Xander and his team are constantly roasting other people for being lesser fighters than themselves. “How many of you have done a flip on a BMX?” Xander asks the CIA’s specialist unit. “WE’RE NOT SLACKERS!” their leader says in retaliation, which immediately marks him as a square and a clear enemy of the squad. When Donnie Yen throws a grenade at Vin Diesel, very nearly killing him, Ruby Rose snorts dismissively, “What is this, Eastern Europe in the early ‘90s? Next he’s going to send you a fax…”

Death and injury isn’t much of a problem, because these kind of movies don’t take place in the real world; they’re trying to distract you from it.

Diesel Rule #3: No Basis In Reality Whatsoever

Before this film was released, Vin Diesel was asked why he was coming back as Xander Cage — a lot. Did the world really need another xXx? His explanation was simple: he “wanted to have fun”. Even Vin Diesel isn’t pretending that this film is anything but hijinks and mental stunts.

Return of Xander Cage doesn’t waste screen-time doing things like ‘explaining’ ‘plot’ — the vaguely coveted item is called Pandora’s Box for god sake — so you shouldn’t expect it to. At the start of the movie, Xander Cage has an orgy with six women. “The things I do for my country,” Xander says, for no discernible reason. This scene has no narrative purpose.

You don’t have to impose any real logic on this film because you know it’s real dumb. It knows this too; it’s self aware and silly, free of any of the angst and fear that plagues us, because it only seeks to distract you for a couple of hours. Isn’t that why people like La La Land so much? It’s weirdly energising in a way that you don’t need to interrogate (kind of like watching a Nazi get punched in the face) and somehow familiar like that daggy fur coat Vin shouldn’t be rocking anymore.

By the end — when there are a few surprise reunions and twists — you know that Vin Diesel is planning on making a xXx movie every year his massive, tree-trunk legs can stand. This movie shouldn’t even exist, but Vin Diesel knew that he’s the only one who can get away with it (well, and The Rock).

He knows that there’s a specific kind of movie that gives you that oh, boy feeling you get when your favourite meal is set down in front of you; that feeling you get when you watch a movie with slickly executed action sequences, just-before-the-explosion/punch one-liners and lots of scenes about the importance of friendship, in which people embrace each other and exchange “you’re okay” glances. He made a franchise about car racing relevant again, okay? Vin Diesel is the coolest uncool person in the world.

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xXx: Return of Xander Cage is in cinemas now.