xXx (2002)

Starring: Vin Diesel and Samuel L. Jackson, with cameos from Danny Trejo, Eve, Tony Hawk, and Rammstein
Grade: A-

In back-to-back-to-back years, Vin Diesel made Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious and xXx, making him a household name and one of the most popular action heroes in film. As goofy as he is now, xXx was good enough to solidify him as a star, and he (sadly) hasn’t been stopped since.

Summary

In the Czech Republic, American spy Jim McGrath (Thomas Ian Griffith) is seen killing a bad guy and stealing some hard drive from him. He escapes into a Rammstein concert but is shot and killed by a member of Anarchy 99, the terrorist group that dwells there.

At the NSA building in Mt. Weather, Virginia, we see Agent Augustus Gibbons (Jackson, who has hair and a scarred face) enter the facility. We hear other agents talk about how a very recent mission “deviated from the set parameters”. Apparently, McGrath was uploading data when he was killed. As they wonder what it is, Gibbons shows up and says it’s a fragment of a complex molecule that their analysts think may be a link to a missing biochemical weapon the Soviets were developing called “Silent Night”. Since three agents have already been killed for this mission, a higher-up official called in Gibbons for his expertise. Gibbons tells the other guy that the three agents have been killed by the ex-military terrorist group Anarchy 99. They can smell the training on their agents a mile away, making a covert mission impossible in its current stages. Gibbons suggests a different approach, scraping the bottom of the barrel for expendable talents they can train but also have a bit of an edge to them because of their mostly criminal backgrounds.

“Do we want to drop another mouse in the snake pit? Or do we want to send our own snake and let him crawl in?”

Well, enter Xander Cage (Diesel), known to his friends as “X”.

At a country club in Sacramento, California, the very rude Senator Dick Hotchkiss (Tom Everett) pulls up in his red Corvette and gives up his keys up for valet parking. Little does he know, he gave the keys to Xander Cage, an extreme sports enthusiast and internet star who protests corrupt people in power by doing dangerous stunts. Speaking to a camera for his internet viewers, he criticizes Dick’s attempts to ban rap music and video games. After letting his viewers know that Hotchkiss has entered the “Xander Zone”, Cage drives the car off a bridge while he escapes in a parachute. His crew gets the entire thing on film. Once he lands from his parachute jump, he jumps into the getaway car driven by his guys (the driver being Tony Hawk in a cameo). That night, he goes back to his place where a surprise party is waiting for him. His friend J.J. (Eve) tells him about how she can get an advance on internet pre-sales, but she needs him to lay low for a while and go somewhere. She runs the underground website he puts his videos on, and she can’t profit if Cage goes to jail. As he calms her nerves by insisting, he’s “untouchable”, soldiers bust into the place, shut down the party, and shoot Cage with a dart to knock him out.

Cage wakes up in a diner and a waitress tells him two big guys dropped him off ten minutes before. She looks nervous and after serving him some coffee, she tries to signal to him to watch the guy sitting next to him. Cage lifts his coffee mug to see “911” written on the napkin. The guy next to him and another behind him pull out guns and try to hold up the place, but Cage takes them both out. Gibbons is there at the diner to watch this whole thing unfold, showing this was all a set up. Cage knew this was a set up because of all the intricate details he noticed once he woke up. He even knew the gun had blanks in them. Impressed by Cage’s intuition, Gibbons decides to move on to the next test. Cage refuses because he wants to know what’s going on, but the “waitress” shoots him with another dart and knocks him out. This time, he wakes up in a plane with others that passed the diner test. The three are thrown off a plane into Colombia and are quickly captured by local gangsters. They are all tied up and threatened by their leader El Jefe (Trejo). After smelling the real blood on his machete, the three realize this is real and not part of a test, so they figure out a plan on the spot to attack El Jefe and escape just as the Colombian army show up and shoot up the camp. Once El Jefe dies in a car explosion, and one of the guys leaves Cage’s group to run off by himself with a bag of cocaine, Cage takes the other wounded guy with him and drops him in a bush in hopes of stealing a car for their escape. He finds a dirt bike and gets chased throughout as the place is torn apart. Eventually, he gets back to save the dude, but U.S. soldiers capture him.

Once the dust settles, Gibbons shows up and tells Cage he’s graduated at the top of his class. One asshole agent admits to Cage that they knew the Colombian army was coming, so they sent Cage and the boys in as decoys. Cage headbutts the guy, so Gibbons kicks Cage down to his knees. He then has Cage walk with him for a talk. He offers Cage a job as a secret agent to gather information on some bad people. Cage refuses, forcing Gibbons to threaten him with a stint at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. He’s got charges up the wazoo such as grand theft auto, reckless endangerment, and there’s the whole thing with bridge stunt. Seeing Cage’s tattoo on the back of his neck, he suggests Cage call himself “xXx” to reference the three strikes he has. Seeing how he has no way out, Cage accepts the job.

In Prague, Czech Republic, Cage is driven to an unknown location by two men named Ivan. Once they get there, Czech secret police Milan Sova (Richy Müller) lays down the law with Cage, telling him he will follow his every word otherwise he will be shot. The only reason Cage is here is because the U.S. government is pressuring the Czech government, despite this whole thing being considered to be an internal affair. He just wants Cage to get whatever information he needs to and leave. Cage goes right back at him with how he doesn’t want to be there either, but he’s not under anyone’s jurisdiction but his own. He then goes to sleep, but Milan tells him to be up in three hours. That night, Milan tells Cage the club they’re going to are filled with rich criminals. They enter the club, and Milan discreetly points out Anarchy 99 and their leader Yorgi (Marton Csokas). He owns the club and five others like it. As he says this, Cage goes straight over to him. He’s about to be kicked out, but he points out that Milan is a cop to gain their trust. Security brings Milan in, and Cage frisks him and pulls out his badge to prove it. Milan is kicked out, and Yorgi appreciates it but wonders what Cage wants. Cage insists he just wants to buy cars from him. Once he introduces himself, the bodyguards show him some love because they’ve seen his videos. Since things cooled down a bit, Cage sits with Yorgi and his girlfriend Yelena (Asia Argento).

Cage gives Yorgi a list of cars he wants, but Yorgi admits one in particular will be hard to get. Yelena argues the $1.5 million deal isn’t worth it, but Cage wants it to be around $1.2 million. They get into a mini argument of sorts, but she offers an account number for him to transfer the money. The deal is agreed upon and they party for the rest of the night.

The next morning, an angry Gibbons calls and asks why Cage adjusted the list of cars to buy, but Cage counters with the fact that he feels they would’ve saw right through it. On top of that, he sends over all the information about each member of the group that he got drinking with Yorgi’s brother and the account number that shows all the illegal transactions the group is involved with. Cage did his part and is ready to go home. Unfortunately, he did so well that Gibbons wants him to stay for a bit and get even deeper with Anarchy 99, sending a care package to him to help out. He argues that since Cage changed the car list, he has a right to change their deal. If he does this for Gibbons, he can go home. It’s just that once Cage gets deeper into the mission and realizes what’s at stake, it’ll be even harder for him to leave unscathed.

My Thoughts:

If you want to get a glimpse of how action movies were in the early 2000s and see why Vin Diesel became the star he is, there’s no better example than xXx. Solidifying his action hero status with the role of Xander Cage, Diesel was incredibly cool in his prime. He’s a clown now, with him consistently reinforcing his persona in action movies to the point where it’s become a joke, but I can’t deny how much of a badass he was in the first xXx. Having this film come right after The Fast and the Furious helped cultivate the persona he made a career with, and it’s helped him headline film after film since. In 2002, we couldn’t argue with the man’s star power, a far cry from how we talk about him today.

Xander Cage is a fearless dude and thrill seeker, fighting the powers that be in his off time and taking his turn at any extreme sport (BMX, skateboarding, dirt biking, snowboarding, etc.) that comes to mind. He’s a rebel and isn’t afraid of a challenge. He chooses these sports because they’re death defying. If you grew up during this timeframe, you know how popular extreme sports were back then. Everybody wanted to pick up a skateboard or try doing tricks on their bike. It was a safe haven for the unathletic video game kids. You know the people I’m talking about. It’s the group of people who would drink Monster Energy like water, stay up all night playing video games, and get into graffiti because they were bored. In the summer, they’d spend all day at the skate parks or ride in the street with their friends if they didn’t have a park to go to. What a time it was! The popularity of extreme sports was a big part of American culture for a short time, and xXx came out right in the thick of it, with Xander Cage himself exemplifying this fun place in time. You can see the effort put into the film to show how much this movie honors its era.

The club scenes are a great example. They’re so “early 2000s” it’s scary.

With cameos from street legends and friends of Cage like Tony Hawk, Mike V, and BMX star Matt Hoffman, as well as numerous scenes dedicated to showing the skills Cage possesses in the many sports under the umbrella of “extreme” (whether it be during his missions or whatever else), we can see Xander Cage truly “lives for this shit”. On top of that, the music is exactly what it needs to be to compliment the style, with hard rock, punk, and energetic and fiery tunes used to pump up the action tenfold. It’s a product of its time, but it worked because of how all-in the movie is in terms of its presentation. To further this point, Cage has the punk and rebellious attitude, the tattoos, this mismatched clothing, the unnecessary accessories like rings and such, and for some reason, he pulls it off. This was how cool Diesel was back in the day. With his natural machismo, charisma, and iconic low voice, you could easily call him “The man” back then and no one would argue it. At one point, he wears his outrageous fur coat, but instead of being a joke, he makes it a staple of the character (to the point where Diesel brings it back for a scene in xXx: Return of Xander Cage sixteen years later). This signature attire of his ranks right up there with John Rambo’s bandana or even Neo’s sunglasses! How is this possible?

It’s because Diesel just had “it” back then, and it made Xander Cage one of my favorite action hero characters of all time. Granted, his aura was ruined by the time the third movie came out, but the first xXx was awesome and this film was the perfect showcase for Vin Diesel as a star.

The early 2000s, American James Bond is a lot of fun to watch. Even so, there’s a lot of unbelievability in this movie that brings it down a bit. The first question would be why they decide to go after an extreme sports enthusiast/criminal in the first place. They never give a good enough reason as to why these types of people are their focus other than the fact they’re expendable. Going along with this note, they never fully train Cage as an agent. After a few field tests, they just ship him off to the Czech Republic and hope for the best which seems risky considering the importance of the mission. These two gripes are mainly my issue. If they gave me a little more reasoning, I would’ve been 100% fine with it. On a lesser note, him surviving an avalanche was a bit wild, but I guess James Bond does this type of crazy stuff all the time, so it’s okay. Sometimes, I have to realize I’m still watching a fun action movie, and I have to bypass some things. The only reason it doesn’t completely deject me from the movie is because from the start, the movie never takes itself too seriously. Cage has no problem lightening the mood, and it’s needed in a movie like this.

The villain in Yorgi was what you would expect, a generic Russian bad guy who drinks vodka all the time. Anarchy 99 is a decent name for a terrorist group, but the reasoning for it being they left the Russian army in 1999 wasn’t nearly as cool. He’s pretty one-dimensional, but the twists involving the beautiful Asia Argento’s Yelena and a solid supporting role from the always memorable Samuel L. Jackson make up for it. Plus, the action is exciting, the scenery is great, and it’s one of the better departures of the usual stuff we get from the spy genre in terms of style. Obviously, it still hits all the beats of a spy movie, but with Diesel leading the charge, the energy and fun to be had hits different.

We are all very aware of the ups and downs of the xXx franchise. However, 2002’s xXx is its highest of highs and easily the best one in the series. If you’re an action movie fan like me, you’re going to love the outrageous fun of xXx.