by Cole Albinder
In honor of the newest movie coming out, I decided I’d jump into the craze that is the xXx franchise, starting with the first one. Fresh off his breakout role in The Fast and the Furious, a young Vin Diesel starred as Xander Cage, a stuntman and extreme sports enthusiast who is recruited to be a secret agent by the NSA. He is given the assignment of infiltrating a group of supposed Russian terrorists, who are secretly harboring a biochemical weapon known as “Silent Night”, in exchange for having his criminal record wiped. The film is enjoyable, largely because of Vin Diesel’s charismatic performance and the scope of the action scenes on display (there’s one involving a motocross bike scene that has to be seen to be believed).