Curator Watchlist
xXx
A loud, glossy, early-2000s action time capsule that’s often ridiculous but rarely boring. It works best as a guilty-pleasure stunt reel and a swagger-heavy riff on spy movies, not as a serious thriller.
Curator Watchlist
A loud, glossy, early-2000s action time capsule that’s often ridiculous but rarely boring. It works best as a guilty-pleasure stunt reel and a swagger-heavy riff on spy movies, not as a serious thriller.
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 2h 4m
Director: Rob Cohen
Starring: Vin Diesel, Asia Argento, Marton Csokas
Xander Cage is your standard adrenaline junkie with no fear and a lousy attitude. When the US Government "recruits" him to go on a mission, he's not exactly thrilled. His mission: to gather information on an organization that may just be planning the destruction of the world, led by the nihilistic Yorgi.
Rob Cohen
Vin Diesel, Asia Argento, Marton Csokas
A loud, glossy, early-2000s action time capsule that’s often ridiculous but rarely boring. It works best as a guilty-pleasure stunt reel and a swagger-heavy riff on spy movies, not as a serious thriller.
xXx is a brazen attempt to turn action-movie cool into a brand, and it mostly succeeds by sheer force of attitude. It swaps the polish of classic spy films for tattoos, extreme sports, loud music, and a hero who treats every scene like a dare. The result is shamelessly stupid, but also shamelessly committed to its own nonsense.
What lingers is less the plot than the vibe: the Rammstein opener, the absurd stunts, the early-2000s fashion, the movie’s conviction that being reckless equals being charismatic. Some of the action still pops, even if the digital effects and tonal choices are very much of their era. The film’s biggest asset is that it never pretends to be tasteful.
If you meet it on its own terms, xXx can be a fun hangout watch, especially as a relic of post-Matrix, pre-superhero blockbuster excess. If you want coherence, elegance, or genuine danger, it’s a miss. If you want a noisy, trashy, occasionally exhilarating action toy, it has enough juice to earn a reluctant recommendation.
DirkH (1★) · 838 likes
Worst porn ever.
Matt Singer (2★) · 318 likes
“James Bond is out of date! He won’t cut it for this generation!” [Proceeds to make a movie that’s exactly like a James Bond movie, only the guy at the center of it has lots of bad tattoos and wears a hideous coat.]
single white femalien (2.5★) · 287 likes
this is maybe the dumbest movie ive ever seen and i loved literally every single minute of it
matt lynch (1★) · 165 likes
has there ever been a filmmaker more self-deluded as to his own coolness than Rob Cohen? this movie starts with a 007 stand-in failing to infiltrate a Rammstein concert, which of course makes all the sense. there are approximately 2 good minutes in this bloated 124-minute tin-eared miscalculation, a couple of truly outstanding motorcycle stunts (slightly marred with some hairy digital head replacement). the rest is significantly worse than the same year's Bond entry, the somehow-still-less-excruciating DIE ANOTHER DAY (which,
Christian Di Leo (2.5★) · 162 likes
An all-time guilty pleasure for me, mainly because I thought this was the coolest fucking thing when I saw it at the age of 10 years old. Vin Diesel as extreme sports secret agent Xander Cage, who at one point uses a metal dinner tray like a skateboard to grind down the railing of a set of stairs as he escapes his own assassination attempt. Hysterically stupid and silly from top-to-bottom, as well as being drenched in early 2000s fads, trends and music. xXxTREME. ✖️❌️✖️👨🦲🚘🪂🇨🇴🩸⚔️🏍💥🚁🇨🇿🧔🏻♀️👩🏻🌊❄️🏂🚀💨☠️
A similarly overcooked early-2000s spy spectacle with outsized gadgets, glossy excess, and a willingness to be ridiculous.
Shares the same era’s obsession with speed, attitude, and street-level cool, with a stronger sense of fun and momentum.
Big, brash, and proudly excessive, it matches the film’s macho energy and love of absurd action escalation.
Another sleek, hyper-stylized action movie that treats coolness as a visual language more than a narrative one.
A slick, disposable action vehicle built around charisma, choreography, and pure momentum.
For viewers who want action cinema pushed into cartoonish, adrenaline-fueled insanity.
A playful, muscular adventure with a similar blend of brawling, quips, and blockbuster swagger.
A notorious cousin in the same family of loud, ridiculous, style-first action movies.
Adventure spectacle with a glossy, game-like energy and a similar early-2000s blockbuster sheen.
A big, noisy studio adventure that leans into camp, spectacle, and comic-book scale.
The franchise follow-up continues the same bombastic, comic-book action approach with a different lead.
For its era-defining blend of flashy action, digital excess, and self-conscious cool.
extreme sports, spy thriller, government recruitment, antihero swagger, terrorism plot, early-2000s excess, male fantasy, stylized action
action, spycraft, extreme sports, early 2000s, guilty pleasure, stylized violence, blockbuster excess, antihero, adrenaline, Y2K aesthetics