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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/xxx_movie.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:''[[{{Tagline}} A New Breed of Secret Agent.]]'']]
3
4->''"Stop thinking Prague police and start thinking Platform/PlayStation. Blow shit up!"''
5-->-- '''Xander Cage''', handily summing up the premise of the movie.
6
7''[=xXx=]'' (pronounced "Triple X") is a 2002 action film directed by Creator/RobCohen from a script by Rich Wilkes. The film stars Creator/VinDiesel as the rebellious GeniusBruiser Xander Cage, a fugitive stuntman pressed into service by NSA agent Augustus Gibbons (Creator/SamuelLJackson). What follows is a series of action-movie-setting "tests" of Xander to see if he is ready for the mission for which he has been recruited: the infiltration of anarchistic terrorist group "Anarchy 99". The group's leader Yorgi (Creator/MartonCsokas) is a former KGB agent, trained to sniff out American spies, which means that the vast majority of regular, less x-treme NSA agents have been deemed unfit.
8
9The film has at its core the outright rejection of many of the TuxedoAndMartini tropes (for better or worse), and an extended sequence at the beginning (where tux-clad NSA agent Jim [=McGrath=] completely fails at his mission and gets killed at a heavy metal concert) is clearly a TakeThat to the Film/JamesBond franchise.
10
11Followed by ''Film/XXxStateOfTheUnion'' (known as ''xXx2: The Next Level'' outside the US and Canada) which stars Music/IceCube as Ex-Navy Seal Darius Stone, who joins the NSA after Xander's [[SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome apparent death]] (or at least Vin Diesel's stand-in).
12
13A third film titled ''[[Film/XxXReturnOfXanderCage xXx: Return of Xander Cage]]'' was released in 2017, which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin like the title implies]] would see the return of Xander Cage, who had seemingly been killed offscreen in the previous movie.
14
15If you're wondering about the title, it was so named to make it harder to find on [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil online piracy sites]], since they were [[TheInternetIsForPorn already flooded with things labeled "XXX"]]. Not related to the 2017 horror anthology film ''Film/{{XX}}''.
16
17----
18!!The film provides examples of:
19
20* AbnormalAmmo: Xander gets a modified revolver that shoots interchangeable rounds, ranging from StagedShooting capsules complete with fake blood to some kind of surveillance bug. Unfortunately, the film ignores the weapon most of the time. It actually backfires on him in one scene, since he's under fire and has the gun stuffed with the complete package. He shoots a radio bullet into a wall before switching to an exploding one.
21* ActionGirl: Yelena
22* AgonyOfTheFeet: Discussed as a plot point. Xander sees through the diner trap when he notices the waitress is wearing highheels, which would be quite painful for someone really working a whole day on her feet.
23* AnarchyIsChaos: Yorgi built a criminal organization out of himself and his former comrades, calling themselves Anarchy 99 after the year of their rebellion. They patterned themselves to be anarchists to cover their tracks.
24* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: The film has a few discrepancies in the script as to the exact nature of [[spoiler: Silent Night, the Soviet-era weapon that Yorgi and his crew plan to use in their worldwide strike. Gibbons mentions that the scientists hired by Yorgi are known to specialize and traffic in biological weapons (which would be things like weaponized bacteria, viruses, fungi, and insects) while Silent Night is shown (and stated by Gibbons) to be a binary nerve agent - a chemical weapon.]]
25* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: The protagonist of this film is turned into a NSA operative and sent to kick ass as Vin Diesel he is, which is cool enough but gets the agency wrong. In real life, all NSA does for the U.S. government is collecting data and breaking codes, and it doesn't have operatives in the same way CIA and FBI have: a real NSA recruit would be put in a desk to work with a computer, not sent to infiltrate a terrorist group.
26* AssholeVictim: Arguably the Russian scientists hired by Anarchy 99. They willingly provide the organization with a horrific chemical weapon and build them a delivery vehicle for it. While it’s unlikely they knew the ''exact'' reason Anarchy 99 wanted it, a group typically doesn’t have altruistic reasons for ordering enough chemical payloads to wipe out several major cities. Their deaths come across more as HoistByTheirOwnPetard rather than anything tragic.
27* AwesomeButImpractical: Xander's car, packed with machine guns, flamethrowers, and missiles, [[spoiler:proves to be utterly helpless against the aquatic Ahab. Cue IndyPloy.]]
28* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:Gibbons successfully "inspires" Cage into gathering intelligence on what's beneath Anarchy 99's fortress by telling him there's a sweeper team ready to wipe out everyone there (who Cage assumes to include Yelena). There isn't, but by that point he's interested in Yelena so wants to stay anyway.]]
29* BigGood: Augustus Gibbons in all three movies.
30* BigLittleBrother: Brothers Yorgi and Kolya are both members of Anarchy 99. Yorgi is explicitly the oldest of the two and their leader. Kolya towers over him and is one of Yorgi's muscle.
31* BilingualBonus: In one scene, two cops who are heard speaking in Czech are saying, quite clearly, something along the lines of "How's it going?" - "Oh, it's cold as s**t." - "Yeah, f**king weather." [[RealityHasNoSubtitles The dialogue is not subtitled]].
32* BlackTieInfiltration: Parodied: The first agent the NSA sends wears a tux... to a Music/{{Rammstein}} concert. He's immediately spotted and taken out, prompting Gibbons to find someone who blends in better.
33* BombThrowingAnarchists: The villains, who intended to launch a chemical attack against several cities to provoke a world war and cause all order to break down leading to global freedom... somehow. The hero, on the other hand, has almost exactly the same social philosophy without the "killing people" part.
34* BondOneLiner: After using a heat seeking round to lock onto the Anarchy 99 henchman's cigarette, Xander says "I told him that cigarette will kill him one day".
35* TheCameo:
36** Several X-Games athletes as themselves in the opening sequence.
37** Skateboarder [[VideoGame/TonyHawksProSkater Tony Hawk]] is Xander Cage's getaway driver after stealing and crashing the Corvette, and is present in the afterparty congratulating Xander's stunt and also [[ActorAllusion shown skating on some ramps in the loft]].
38** The German Metal band Music/{{Rammstein}} is the band performing in the opening concert scene.
39** English techno duo Music/{{Orbital}} appear as the club [=DJs=] in the rave scene.
40* CanAlwaysSpotACop: Xander Cage can spot police in his native America but also in the eastern bloc countries he visits, going so far as to point them out to establish his bona fides with the Russian mafia. Of course, he was actually ''on a mission'' with said Czech agent; his cunning isn't in that he was able to spot the guy (although he does [[InvokedTrope invoke it]]), but having the foresight to realize his local handler was more useful as a tool to infiltrate the mob than as a partner.
41* TheCartel: Xander and two other potential recruits for the CIA are flown to Colombia and dropped off in narco territory as a test to see which of them would be badass enough to survive. Just as they're about to become victims to a TortureTechnician, the Colombian army swoops in to dismantle the farm.
42* CharacterTitle: Xander gets his codename of "Triple X" from the three X's tattooed on the back of his neck.
43* CastingGag: Inverted in-universe, played straight in real life. In the Colombia scene, Xander still does not believe this is real, after the diner was just a test. If you believed it was fake, and you were expecting to see someone pretending to be El Jefe, then someone who looks like [[spoiler:Danny Trejo]] is precisely the person you'd expect. Bonus points because the audience get the same effect, because of the actors previous work.
44* ChekhovsGun:
45** When Xander is hanging out with Anarchy 99 in a nightclub, he chastises one of them for smoking, saying "you know those things will kill you." The man meets his end when he gets targeted by a heat seeking round that locked onto his cigarette.
46** Like in the tradition of the ''Film/JamesBond'' films this one is parodying, Xander is issued a bunch of useful gadgets that all come in handy. [[spoiler:However, the gadgets and weapons he had put in his car just in case turn out to be useless for stopping the sub during the climax, forcing him to improvise.]]
47* CloseOnTitle: The movie's title is shown twice, once at the opening, and twice during the end credits with the cast names.
48* CombatPragmatist: Yorgi tries to just shoot the protagonists, but the room exploded.
49* ComicallyMissingThePoint: A deliberate in-universe example. When a fully-geared SWAT team smashes through his windows during a party, Xander puts his hands up and quips "Alright, alright, I'll turn the music down!"
50* CoolCar: A '67 Pontiac GTO, stuffed with gadgets and weaponry. Stealing cool cars is also Anarchy 99's main business; there's a room full of them early in the film.
51* CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority: The movie starts with Xander stealing a State Senator's car and plunging it off a bridge to protest his stance on violent music and video games. He also refuses to SellOut by having a video game made based on himself. His boss later [[ExploitedTrope exploits]] this trope by ordering him to return home, knowing that he would defy orders and continue his mission. "If I told you ''not'' to jump off a bridge..." Cage sheepishly admits that he'd probably do it.
52* DeadpanSnarker: Gibbons ribs on Xander every chance he gets, and Xander himself pretty much snarks at the same frequency that James Bond delivers one-liners.
53* DeathFakedForYou: [[spoiler: The Czech cop, which causes his FaceHeelTurn and delays the girl's HighHeelFaceTurn.]]
54* DiegeticSwitch: The movie opens with a Bond Expy being chased through back alleys to the sounds of Music/{{Rammstein}}'s "''Feuer Frei''". He later stumbles into an actual Rammstein concert, where he is murdered.
55* DinerBrawl: Xander Cage is abducted from his home by government agents, and wakes up the next day in a busy road diner. Almost immediately there's a stick-up by two armed men, but Cage easily dispatches both of them. Agent Gibbons reveals himself and explains that this was a test which Cage passed, but asks why Cage was confident enough to just walk right up to the second gunman and grab his shotgun. Cage [[SherlockScan points out all the increasingly unlikely discrepancies he noticed]]; one of the gunmen packing a cop-issue Beretta and the other one dressed up as a broker on a Sunday when the stock market is closed he deemed unlikely, but still plausible; a career waitress coming to work in high heels, however, was beyond the realm of physical possibility, so he realized that if she was fake, then the whole setting was fake and the guns only had blanks.
56* DressedInLayers: The agent from the opening takes out a mook in a well-equipped practical spy suit, before taking it off to reveal a pristine tux underneath.
57* DubNameChange: In the Russian dub, a lot of information about the antagonists gets re-written, such as their organization being renamed from Anarchy 99 to Anarchy 16, Kolya and Kirill to Zoltan and Jiří, and the band being now fully Czech rather than Russian with some Czech members.
58* DunkingTheBomb: It's revealed that the villain's chemical weapon breaks down in deep water (actually TruthInTelevision for organophosphate-based nerve agents, which Silent Night appears to be). So, in the climatic scene, with the first rocket about to launch and wipe out Prague, Xander takes the rocket, flips it upside down, shouts out a catchprase, and bails out. The upside down rocket pushes the entire sub deep into the river where everything explodes.
59* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: The villain wants to create a world of anarchy through chemical terrorist attacks on 10 major cities to dismantle all nation-states and their political order, out of revenge for himself and his comrades after being forgotten as soldiers after the Chechen War.
60* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Yorgi genuinely loves his BigLittleBrother Kolya, using him as his [[TheDragon Dragon]] and being very upset over his subsequent death at Xander's hands.
61* EveryCarIsAPinto: Check out the Corvette... it totally explodes ''before'' hitting the ground. Yorgi's boat, too. And the cars of the Colombians move this into the MadeOfExplodium area, even then the Colombian army doesn't use rockets.
62* EvilVersusEvil: Invoked and discussed by Gibbons by way of explaining his reasoning for recruiting criminals, although it's actually more BlackAndGrayMorality in that the proper villains are ''far'' more evil than Xander, who's more of a low level underground figure who never sets out to hurt anyone directly. The only crime we see him commit onscreen is stealing and crashing the car of a zealous MoralGuardian politican.
63-->'''Gibbons:''' Do we drop another mouse into the snake pit, or do we send our own snake and let him crawl in?
64* EvilVersusOblivion: {{Inverted|Trope}}. Xander tells the agent he works for "when you hire somebody to save the world, make sure they like the world the way it is." It zigzags back to straight since Xander is horrified when he later witnesses Yuri [[BadBoss murder dozens of his own scientists]] to test his new super-virus, and leads the effort to stop him before it can reach Prague.
65* ExplainExplainOhCrap: When Xander and two others are dumped off a plane, they find themselves held captive in a compound. They assume it's another test and thus Xander mocks the murderous thug coming in for his bad accent and over the top threats. The man eventually thrusts a machete under Xander's face and asks if he thinks this is funny.
66-->'''Xander:''' What’s funny is…this actually smells like real blood.
67* {{Expy}}: Xander = Dom from ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious'' with a bike focus instead of cars.
68* FiringOneHanded: Kolya briefly does this with a FN P-90, which is small enough to do this believably.
69* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: Kolya is Yorgi's younger brother. He's also lot more immature than the reserved and sinister Yorgi, such as proudly fanboying over meeting Xander Cage and being super-giddy at the castle orgy scene, at least compared to Yorgi.
70* ForeignFanservice: As Xander infiltrates a group of Eastern European criminals, we're treated to numerous attractive girls in nightclubs and swimming pools, the Russian spy Yelena, the Czech special agent Xander looks at through his X-Ray binoculars...
71* {{Foreshadowing}}: In his introduction scene, Yorgi, upon learning that his men lost the agent, he exclaims [[spoiler: 'Zaraza!']], what is a common Russian swearword literally meaning [[spoiler: 'pestilence']]. Later he is revealed to plan the [[spoiler: terrorist strike using a chemical weapon]].
72* FromCamouflageToCriminal: The bad guys are all ex-Russian military who started a grand theft auto network in Europe to make a profit. Subverted though in that this is simply so they can finance their real objective, which is anarchic terrorism.
73* GasChamber: The villain Yorgi uses a makeshift gas chamber to [[ShootTheBuilder eliminate the scientists]] who developed his chemical weapon Silent Night. While the scientists are celebrating, he has the device activated and the room sealed off so he can watch them suffocate to death from the other side of the glass doors.
74* GeniusBruiser: Xander Cage. While not quite a genius, he is capable of pulling off an IndyPloy and being observant of his surroundings, which enables him to pass the first NSA test.
75* GoodGunsBadGuns: {{Justified|Trope}} and {{inverted|Trope}}. The movie is set in the Czech Republic, which used to be part of the former Soviet Bloc state Czechoslovakia. Xander's allies in the Prague police are therefore armed with Warsaw Pact-derived weapons, while Anarchy 99 uses Western guns.
76* HighHeelHurt: Xander Cage is drugged by government officials and wakes up in a diner that is about to be robbed. He quickly realizes that the scenario is a test because too many things about the diner do not add up. The clincher is that the waitress is wearing high heels. No waitress would wear high heels to work since she would be crippled in a few days.
77* HollywoodLaw:
78** Xander's stunt at the beginning couldn't trigger the Three Strikes law, as they cannot be three felonies from the same "transaction."[[note]]Unless he already has two, but that's not what Gibbons said.[[/note]] Also, they would be state crimes and he wouldn't be sent to Leavenworth (a federal prison). Of course, the chief could have just been saying that to pressure him into working for him.
79** The NSA does ''not'' have agents in the field--they're strictly signals intelligence (phone calls, emails, that sort of thing). Non-military human intelligence is the CIA's business.
80* IKnowMortalKombat: Subverted. Xander demonstrates an apparent weapons proficiency when he's issued his gear, saying he played a lot of first-person shooters while laid up with a leg injury. Most of the time, his accuracy is generally poor and he doesn't seem to understand the concept of a safety.
81* ImprobableAimingSkills: Oddly averted. The assassin in the infamous TakeThat has an incredibly difficult task - hit someone in the middle of a mosh pit several dozen yards away with a handgun. The assassin selects a scoped, laser-sight assisted gun, assumes a prone position, rests the handgun on a stone railing and waits patiently for a clear center-mass shot.
82* IntentionallyAwkwardTitle: "Triple X", anybody? It's rumored that the title was meant to make life harder for would-be pirates: if you type "xxx movie" on a file sharing website, your results are probably going to be flooded with [[TheInternetIsForPorn a different type of triple-x movie]].
83* InstantSedation: Xander takes one dinky dart and goes down when it's time to load him into a plane.
84* {{Jerkass}}: The Senator who gets his car stolen by Xander near the beginning. We even get his racism demonstrated [[AmbiguouslyBrown when he assumes Xander is Mexican]], so we know he's a jerk.
85* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Xander Cage may be uncouth and his way of making an statement is to drop somebody else's car on the bottom of a bridge, but he never sets out to hurt anyone directly.
86* LawmanGoneBad: The Czech cop who, after one too many humiliations, turns informant for the bad guys.
87* LetsGetDangerous: Crossed with OOCIsSeriousBusiness. In the first half of the movie, Xander goes out of his way not to kill anyone - he may be an anti-hero who rebels against authority but he’s not AxCrazy. He pulls a guard off the cliff into the water below, tranquilizes another, and generally avoids the others on his way into the castle’s underlevels. Then he sees just how evil Anarchy 99 is when they gas an entire room of people with a nerve agent. Following this, he blows up Kolya without flinching, causes an avalanche that wipes out a dozen men, and eventually kills Victor himself.
88* MadeOfExplodium: The Corvette, Yorgi's boat, the cars of the Colombians, they all explode very easily.
89* MsFanservice:
90** Yelena, as she's played by Creator/AsiaArgento.
91** The woman in lingerie that appears in Xander's room while he's with Anarchy 99.
92--->'''Xander Cage:''' Oh, the things I'm gonna do for my country.
93* TheMole: [[spoiler:Yelena]] is actually another undercover spy.
94* NiceToTheWaiter: A deleted scene showed Xander humoring a young boy on his flight to Prague who had wandered back to ask about his "video game".[[note]]It was actually a digital mission briefing.[[/note]] Notably, the scene was cut in part ''because'' of this trope - it was felt that seeing Cage being nice to the kid would have painted him as a hero rather than an antihero too early in the film.
95* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: As mooks rush in on Xander and Yelena, Xander tries to fire his assault weapon, but nothing happens. He gets out of the way and lets Yelena handle the henchmen, before she goes up to Xander and tells him that he needs to take the safety off.
96* OffTheShelfFX: When the smoking sniper pins down the officers, the rocket launcher Xander uses is actually a modified video camera painted green.
97* OhCrap:
98** When Jim [=McGrath=] sneaks into a building to evade pursuit, we get a brief, silent reaction shot when he realizes he's walked into a heavy metal concert, and may stick out just a tad.
99** Subverted when Kolya jumps the castle gate and sees Xander standing on the other side. Kolya doesn’t have time to realize what Xander’s doing before his bike explodes… and him with it.
100* OneSteveLimit: Cheerfully averted, much to Xander's dismay, with the two Ivans.
101* OutrunTheFireball: Avalanche actually, but the effect is the same, and it still requires defying the laws of physics to pull off.
102* ParkingPayback: What Xander does to the congressman's car.
103* PerpetualTourist: In the end, Cage finally travels to Bora Bora.
104* PowerPerversionPotential: The "penetrator mode" on the binoculars, which allows the user to see through walls... or clothes.
105* PreMortemOneLiner: "Fire in the hole."
106* QuietCryForHelp: The waitress in the diner offers Xander a cup of coffee. When asked about her shaking hands, she says she's okay, but when Xander picks up the cup of coffee, "911" is written on the napkin.
107* RealityIsUnrealistic: Destroying nerve gas by dipping it in water seems like a typical action movie plot device... but the best way of destroying organophosphate-based nerve agents is to sink them in a large body of running water.
108* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: While initially coming across as cold and willing to sell out his own agents like a typical spymaster, Augustus Gibbons is ultimately this. Gibbons believes in Xander’s skill enough to get the intel on Ahab and Silent Night, and is willing to send him home and let the sweepers clean things up. When Xander goes above and beyond to take down Ahab after it launches early, Gibbons trusts him enough to call off an air strike and let Xander finish it. When it appears (briefly) that Xander died, he is clearly upset by it and still offers Yelena asylum despite having no incentive to do so, saying he’s “a man of his word”.
109* RefugeInAudacity: By using some over the top biker-looking guy that would never make it through spy training, no bad guy will ever believe he is a spy, at least long enough for him to do his thing.
110* RevolversAreJustBetter: Justified in that it's much easier to switch custom ammunition with a revolver than with a magazine.
111* SherlockScan: Xander, in the cafe. To wit, his suspicion was raised when he spotted a man reading the business section of the paper and dressed like he was on his way to Wall Street, on a Sunday. Then he noticed the supposed robbers were using guns you'd see feds using, as opposed to the cheap stuff small time crooks would be more likely to own. But what really tipped him off was the waitress, who was wearing shoes which would have ruined her feet after standing in them for an 8-hour shift.
112* ShootTheBuilder: Yorgi kills all the scientists with his nerve agent after they finish building his submarine.
113* ShoutOut: Triple X was the codename of a Russian secret agent, Bond's opposite number, in ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe''. It was actually the Bond Girl, but there is a bit of misdirection at the start when we are led to believe it is her lover (who turns out to be an assassin gunning for Bond).
114* SloMoBigAir: The bridge stunt Xander pulls with the Senator's car happens this way.
115* SniperPistol: Used to kill the secret agent at the beginning.
116* SpiesAreLecherous: Justified. Xander Cage proves himself a lovin' machine while infiltrating the terrorist organization Anarchy 99, but Xander isn't a normal agent at all and was [[RecruitingTheCriminal abruptly recruited from the streets]], so he's already familiar with a HookersAndBlow lifestyle. Partaking in the orgy enjoyed by Yorgi and his gang also helps maintain his cover.
117-->'''Xander:''' The things I'm gonna do for my country...
118* SpoofAesop: Xander Cage steals the car of an anti-free speech senator named Dick. He then drives the car off a bridge and base jumps from the car. On the way down, he delivers the line "And the moral of the story is 'Don't be a dick, Dick!'"
119* SpottingTheThread:
120** Xander Cage spotting the fake diner hold-up and critiquing everyone in on it due to all the dangling threads he spotted within a minute:
121--> '''Xander:''' You know, you almost had me going there for a while. I was a bit groggy before, then I started noticing things. Like, you got a stockbroker over here, all dressed up, reading the Financial Times on a Sunday morning when the market's closed. Unlikely, but okay, I can go with that. I can even go with the stick-up man packing a cop-issue Beretta. But you want to know where you blew it? With her. ''[points to the waitress]'' My aunt was in the restaurant business all her life. There's no way in hell a career waitress comes to work in high heels. She'd have blisters the size of pancakes before lunch. And if she ain't real, then this whole thing ain't real. That's how I knew this bozo over here wouldn't get a shot off even if we waited till St. Patrick's Day. ''[grabs and fires a loaded shotgun; it shoots a blank round]'' Because there's nothing but blanks in these guns. Oh, and no offense, but their performances were terrible.
122** Subverted in the next scene when Xander assumes they are still playing with him after dumping him in Columbian drug cartel territory. He figures it out just before Danny Trejo goes to work on him with a machete.
123* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Quite a few throughout the film:
124** The NSA agent seen in the infamous opening scene pulls off his SpyCatsuit to reveal a pristine tux to blend in while running from the bad guys. He then runs smack-dab into the mosh pit of a Rammstein concert where he’s immediately spotted and killed; when you’re trying to blend in, it’s a good idea to make sure your outfit matches the place you’re going to be.
125** Xander passes the diner test more out of necessity than anything (they were pointing guns at him after all), and when offered a job by Gibbons, he ''immediately'' says he wants no part of it. He’s then shipped out of the country (while unconscious) and thrown into the middle of a Colombian cartel’s territory. He ''still'' refuses - not everyone is going to [[JumpedAtTheCall jump at the call]], even if they have the skills for the job and ''especially'' when the person giving them the offer put them through a “test” that almost got them killed.
126** The movie in general goes out of its way to subvert IKnowMortalKombat, despite Xander’s reassurances to Shavers. He doesn’t know about the safety on his assault rifle and takes multiple full-auto bursts to hit Yorgi (with realistic recoil issues to boot). He also has to have the heat-seeker rocket set up for him; without proper training, real life advanced weapon systems aren’t always going to be user-friendly.
127** While spying on the construction of Ahab, Xander witnesses the mass murder of the scientists by nerve gas and the utter inhuman disregard by Anarchy 99. Does he have NervesOfSteel? Nope, he has a full-on ''panic attack'' complete with open tears. Despite being a thrill-seeker, watching a group of people suffer an agonizing death while they beg for their lives is enough to break trained soldiers, much less a civilian.
128* TakeThat:
129** The scene introducing Xander to the viewers is also a HUGE Take That against... [[MoralGuardians Jack Thompson]]. Understandable considering this is a Creator/VinDiesel film, as in the guy who started his own development studio because [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames he wanted the licensed games of his movies to actually be good]].
130** The opening has Jim [=McGrath=], a Film/JamesBond-style spy and Cage's predecessor, who is killed when he stands out like a sore thumb in a Rammstein concert because he's wearing a [[IconicOutfit tuxedo]].
131* TattooAsCharacterType: Xander has the titular [=xXx=] tattoo on the back of his neck and is otherwise fairly tattooed up as a thrill seeker would be.
132* TemptingFate:
133** Cage brags about being untouchable in the beginning of the film. The CIA team barges in right on the dot.
134** [[spoiler:Yorgi telling Cage to learn how to shoot, right before the fatal volley hits him.]]
135* TortureTechnician: Danny Trejo's character, who just so happens to be a professional torturer working for a Colombian cartel. However, his captives think he is an actor at first until Cage notices that the "fake blood" on the machete he's wielding smells real.
136* TrappedUndercover: Yelena's backstory - sent to infiltrate Anarchy 99 by a Russian intelligence agency, but ultimately forgotten and abandoned until Cage appears.
137* TruthInTelevision:
138** The best Special Operations forces and spies tend to be people who don't fit the traditional image of the military or spies, sometimes criminals. Also, there have been several celebrities who have worked as intelligence agents ''after'' becoming famous. Between the two, the movie got more right [[RuleOfCool than one might expect]].
139** Intelligence agencies and police often use people who would blend into the group they infiltrate. With no real ties to the agency, there is no danger of blowing the cover, because there is no cover to start with. Nicely shown in the scene when Yorgi meets Xander who is accepted after being recognized as a notorious adrenaline junkie.
140* TuxedoAndMartini: Subverted in the beginning where we see a James Bond-style spy, Jim [=McGrath=], doing his spy thing, and failing because he didn't realize he was heading into a heavy metal concert. The rest of the film follows the basic tenets of the trope (absurd gadgetry, over-the-top villains, et al), it is just more... anarchic about it.
141* VolleyingInsults: Xander and Yelena.
142-->'''Yelena:''' Do you know what a wire transfer is?
143-->'''Xander:''' Is she for real? Sweetheart, is there anything else you need to do? Let us big boys have a conversation?
144-->'''Yelena:''' "Conversation", a word with four syllables. Do you want some ice before your brain overheats?
145-->'''Xander:''' Ice? Yes, you could chisel some off your heart -- if you can find it.
146* WardrobeFlawOfCharacterization: The title character makes a point of commenting on Milon Sova's bad suit, described as "motel drapes". Later on, we see Sova wearing a better suit, because he's sold information on Xander to the Big Bad - "My government doesn't pay as well as Yorgi."
147* WeaponizedCar: The Pontiac GTO that Xander gets loaded with tons of different high-power weapons. [[spoiler:Ultimately, however, this trope is deconstructed when the car proves useless against AHAB, as destroying it will only cause the chemical bomb within it to detonate.]]
148* XMakesAnythingCool: The title of the film. Since the protagonist's real name is Xander Cage, the [=xXx=] tattooed on his neck could be his initial repeated three times. Inverted when Gibbons suggests the three X's could also mean the three "strikes" Xander has against the law.
149* XRayVision: Binoculars, in this case. Of course, one of the first things Xander does with the binoculars is [[PowerPerversionPotential peer through a female agent's clothing.]] He uses it again to see where a gunman is during the climax.
150* XtremeKoolLetterz: Between its title and the fact that it is also the protagonist's nickname, the film sure believes that XMakesAnythingCool, especially in triplicate.
151* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Lampshaded by Yorgi when he wipes out the team who created Ahab with their own missiles, telling Yelena that they are a liability now.
152* YouTalkTooMuch: When Xander Cage is being briefed in Prague by a loud-mouthed bookworm agent on the high-tech weapons they'll be giving him, Xander asks him "You ever get punched in the face for talking too much?"
153----
154->''"Welcome to the Xander Zone!"''

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