In theaters

A MAN APART, directed by F. Gary Gray, written by Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring, 114 minutes, rated R.

If your last film sounded as if it were promoting porn and if it featured you parading about in a sheepskin pimp coat, where would you go from there? Straight into counseling? Perhaps to a bar? Maybe into a coma?

Not Vin Diesel.

Fresh from the success of “XXX,” the actor now takes to the screen in “A Man Apart,” a violent revenge drama directed by F. Gary Gray that was shot before the actor’s big hits, “XXX” and “The Fast and the Furious,” but which has been sitting on a studio shelf for years because of problems with its ending.

Those problems remain well intact, but now, with Diesel firmly established as a headlining star, the film has been dusted off, reworked in an editing bay and, for better or worse, released in theaters.

As directed by Gray from a script by Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring, the film stars Diesel as Sean Vetter, a former L.A. thug turned DEA agent who is psychologically torn apart after the brutal murder of his wife, Stacy (Jacqueline Obradors), “the love of his life, the only thing he had,” who died in a bloody shootout at their beachside home.

Who stuck it to Stacy? For Vetter, it comes down to two feared drug kingpins: Memo Lucero (Geno Silva), the conniving Colombian drug lord Vetter and his partner, Demetrius (Larenz Tate), capture and lock away early in the film, and the elusive El Diablo, a mysterious man determined to keep pushing cocaine from Mexico to California, regardless of Vetter’s threats to strangle his operation.

Convinced that El Diablo is his man, Vetter enlists Demetrius and his old gang-banging buddy, Big Sexy (George Sharperson), to help find the creep and avenge Stacy’s death.

In spite of what its characters’ names suggest, what ensues is not the cartoon action fantasies of “XXX” and “Furious,” but a movie that has energy, rage and heart to spare, so much so that it codes midway through and collapses on screen in one big, convoluted mess.

The problem with “A Man Apart” isn’t what you might expect – it’s not Diesel, who took the role knowing he’d have to act and does a fair job of it here, holding the screen with the same charisma and intensity he showcased in “Boiler Room,” while only occasionally overdoing it with Vetter’s anger management issues.

Instead, what unhinges the movie is its ongoing lapses in logic. For instance, how can Vetter, a DEA agent earning a modest salary, afford what’s clearly a multimillion-dollar beachside retreat? How does he have the power to release Memo to another prison when he’s no longer with the force? When El Diablo’s identity is revealed in the awful, out-of-left-field ending, it’s immediately clear that he could have killed Vetter any number of times. So why didn’t he?

You tell me.

Grade: D+

On video and DVD

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, directed by Chris Columbus, written by Steve Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling, 161 minutes, rated PG.

Imagine suffering the sort of hellish childhood Harry Potter has had to endure – the murder of his parents by the vicious Lord Voldemont, the feeling of being unwanted and unloved by his abusive relatives, a lightning bolt scar on his forehead and, last November, the official condemnation of Lewiston’s own Jesus Party.

Sure, that last one is worth a snort and a giggle, but when you add it all up, the totality of Harry’s situation is enough to make any Muggle feel like a Mudblood.

Mr. Potter’s gift – and the main reason he remains so popular – is that he has the courage to carry on in spite of life’s potholes, rising above the seemingly insurmountable lows of his situation to scale new highs on his way to becoming a young man.

Getting there has been a tough scrabble, for sure, one peppered with a host of obstacles, such as giant spiders run amok, a towering serpent with a mean bite and a chess game gone berserk. But as “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” proves, it’s an imaginative, often entertaining journey into self-realization that’s been well worth the trip.

As the film opens, young Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasely (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn that evil is looming deep within Hogwarts’ Chamber of Secrets. Just what that evil is won’t be revealed here, but it’s potent and it’s dark, just colorful enough to spark dread in any 8-year-old while keeping their parents pleasantly entertained.

The episodic story line that ensues crams in as much of the book’s more dramatic elements as possible while, in the process, sacrificing almost all of its subtlety, just as in the last film. Indeed, director Chris Columbus’ focus is less on the book’s more introspective moments than on the sort of crowd-pleasing scenes that tend to make a nearly three-hour movie seem more like two hours. Aiding that cause is production designer Stuart Craig, whose rich, beautiful sets are complex and interesting even during those moments when the film is neither.

Fortunately, “Secrets” allows Columbus the opportunity to freshen the pot with Rowling’s new characters, from Kenneth Branagh’s Gilderoy Lockhart, a preening wizard whose ego knows no bounds, to Jason Isaacs’ duplicitous Lucius Malfoy and the bathroom-dwelling Moaning Myrtle (Julie Walters Henderson), a dead girl with a hot temper who steals each scene she’s in.

With Robbie Coltrane back as Hagrid, Alan Rickman as Severus Snape and Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, it’s Richard Harris’ posthumous performance as professor Albus Dumbledore that gives the film its unexpected emotional weight and its bittersweet undercurrent.

The actor, who died three weeks before the film’s theatrical release, effortlessly grounds the movie, balancing Columbus’ frequently hysterical mood with the stalwart calm and reserve it needs.

To help sell the new DVD, Columbus has included 19 additional and extended scenes, interviews with the cast and with Rowling, self-guided tours and several games, the totality of which might be just enough to keep fans happy until June 21, when the next book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” hits book stores.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help.

Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Auto Focus?C

The Banger Sisters?B

Barbershop?B+

Blood Work?B-

Blue Crush?B+

The Bourne Identity?B+

8 Mile?C

8 Women?B

Far From Heaven?A

Femme Fatale?C+

Formula 51?F

The Four Feathers?C

Full Frontal?D

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS?B+

Half Past Dead?F

Igby Goes Down?A

I Spy?C-

Jackass: The Movie?B

Knockaround Guys?D

Lilo & Stitch?B+

Maid in Manhattan?B-

Minority Report?A-

Moonlight Mile?B

My Big Fat Greek Wedding?A-

One Hour Photo?A-

Possession?B

Red Dragon?B+

Reign of Fire?C+

The Ring?C

The Road to Perdition?A-

Secretary?B+

Simone?B

Signs?B-

Spy Kids 2?B+

Sweet Home Alabama?B-

Swept Away?D-

Swimfan?C

The Truth About Charlie?B-

The Tuxedo?C-

Unfaithful?B-

White Oleander?B+

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?A

The Wild Thornberries Movie?B+