xXx

The Day the Spy Wore Cargo Pants

I miss the exact brand of caffeinated nonsense the early 2000s sold as culture. For a little while, Hollywood genuinely treated skateboards, dirt bikes, and energy drinks like a full ideological worldview.

xXx is bottled from that moment. Rob Cohen made it in 2002, right after The Fast and the Furious, and the whole movie plays like a loud dare sent straight at James Bond.

The plot is proudly idiotic in the cleanest possible way. Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) steals a senator’s Corvette, launches it off a bridge, and parachutes away before the wreckage finishes dropping. Instead of throwing him in prison forever, the U.S. government decides this is exactly the man they need to infiltrate a gang of Russian nihilists in Prague.

Why? Because the film needs an answer, and "a guy in a suit would stand out" is apparently enough. Set aside, for a second, the fact that a mountain-sized man wrapped in fur, covered in tribal tattoos, and radiating chaos might be the single least subtle person in Central Europe.