xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

Genre: Action

Directed: D.J. Caruso

Stars: Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Ruby Rose, Kris Wu, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Rory McCann, Toni Collette, Samuel L. Jackson, Hermione Corfield, Michael Bisping, Tony Gonzalez, Al Sapienza, Neymar

Production: Paramount Pictures

“Kick some a**, get the girl, and try to look dope while you do it.” – These are the words uttered by Samuel L. Jackson’s Augustus Gibbons, and they pretty much service as a yard stick for this franchise’s auspicious return. The first xXx (2002), for all its overzealous bluster still managed a surprising amount of memorable moments. The stunts begin with our hero Xander Cage (Diesel) parachuting off a car while going over a bridge, and from there the movie simply doesn’t let up. So what kind of hyper-styled, gun toting, car flipping, xtreme sporting, PG-13 rebelliousness does this new movie have.

Infinitely more interesting...

Apparently not a lot, come to find out. The Return of Xander Cage for all its first act sizzle and a slew of new, conveniently internationally renowned cast members does little to nothing in the way of providing passable thrills. It instead retreads old ground with a sandbox of ever changing loyalties, perfunctory exposition dumps and sloppily edited action scenes. If the first movie was the pinnacle, this movie is the xXx franchise’s totaled remains at the bottom of a creek.

The film begins with the sudden death of Gibbons via rogue satellite which sets up a search for the films technical macguffin. Ironically enough xXx: State of the Union (2005) begins with the off-screen death of Xander Cage but, you know, death means nothing in films like these. New NSA program head (Collette) then re-recruits Xander and tasks him with locating the technical macguffin, which has been taken by a task force of equally daring criminals. After some cajoling, Xander decides to help the NSA this one last time but only if he works with his own ensemble of daring misfits.

OMG it's Dom from Fast and the Furious!

I was willing to meet this movie halfway, I really was. And for the first fifteen minutes, The Return of Xander Cage was poised to deliver all the goofball bravado of an early 2000’s Sprite commercial set to the vibrations of Toni Collette’s furrowed eyebrows, Nina Dobrev’s frenzied fangirl-dom and Diesel’s obnoxious fur coat. All the movie needed to do at that point was give the audience some unique action set-pieces and try not take its plot too seriously.

Unfortunately the movie makes both mistakes. It inundates the audience with rather tame acrobatics and mindless gun violence, neither of which crackle with the excitement needed nor leaves us with any kind of impression. The action sequences are then chopped up and tucked under long, padded moments of supposedly clever dialogue that only highlight Vin Diesel’s holier-than-thou smugness. It’s all pretty repetitive too – Diesel is cornered by baddies sporting guns, he says something he thinks is clever, no one has the horse sense to shoot the son-of-a-b***h and he somehow gets the upper hand.

I stay up past my bedtime like a true rebel!

As for the plot, the movie goes through great lengths to justify late film allegiance shifts by tethering our heroes and villains to the same middle school understanding of populism that defined the first movie. Once this happens however the movie nose dives into conspiracy theories and hackneyed political messaging which it has absolutely no interest in following through on. While I’m all in favor of raging against the machine, I really don’t think the best conduit for such material is a movie sponsored by Timberland and Thom Browne sunglasses. Especially when our supposed hero thinks being a rebel means scooting around on a skateboard, stealing cable and bedding every woman who asks him about his tattoos.

All that and all this movie had to do from the get-go was “kick a**, get the girl and try to look dope while doing it.” Spoiler alert: Cage doesn’t get the girl (though he does get his GTO back). He does kick a reasonable amount of a**, sure but considering this movie has Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa in it, there should have been a lot more bodies on the floor. As for looking dope, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is disappointingly humdrum. There’s nothing too unique about the action except maybe for a climactic zero-G fistfight which probably has a record for longest plane nosedive in movie history. Besides that, if you want to get your money’s worth of death defying stunts, go watch The Fast and the Furious (2001-Present) series instead.

Final Grade: F