Vin Diesel fails to break the mold

As the summer movie season fast approaches, it's time for movie companies to jettison their cinematic flotsam early to make way for big blockbuster spectaculars. The release of "A Man Apart," an uninspired cop drama, adds nothing significant to the genre, and in fact borrows liberally from many better crime dramas of the past few years. Sadly, the final product is not greater than the sum of its parts.\nIn "A Man Apart," Vin Diesel plays Sean Vetter, a tough, no nonsense DEA agent who's current assignment is to break up a Mexican drug ring. In a brilliant strategy to throw Vetter off of the case, the drug barons decide that murdering his wife (Jacqueline Obradors) would be an excellent way to make him quit his job. But the plan backfires and it only enrages Vetter further, giving him the mind-consuming goal of dismantling the cartel and finding "Diablo," the mysterious boss of the Baja Drug Cartel.\nI'd love to be able say Diesel turns in a moody and nuanced portrayal of the tortured Vetter, but he's basically the same character he played in "Pitch Black" and "XXX," a tough guy out to get what he wants, who refuses to let anyone get in his way. Though Diesel proved he can act in "Pitch Black," he just doesn't seem to be trying all that hard in "A Man Apart." The material is poor, basically an amalgam of elements from "Traffic," "The Usual Suspects," "El Mariachi" and a pinch of the "Dirty Harry" series, so it's not breaking any new ground. \nVisually, the film is interesting, to a point, but the director seems more interested in cool gunfights than actually using the cinematography to explore character motivations and settings.\nEssentially, "A Man Apart" is a typical Hollywood cop drama that spends more time on flash and action than it does on character and drama, and winds up a mediocre final product.