Whoever told nearly 50-year-old Vin Diesel that he could still be a sex icon needs a reality check. I’m all for fun movies (I stand by the original TRANSFORMERS movie) and what I can happily say about xXx: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE is that is doesn’t take itself too seriously. Its problem is that so much of the film is so amateur. Vin Diesel isn’t the only one stuck in 2002. I hate using the term cliché because I believe clichés done right can be great, but xXx relies on too many tired tropes and jokes, leaving it hard to say this can even be a fun watch film.
The plot follows Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) as he must be called back to the CIA from retirement to help the government locate a secret weapon that can hack into and bring down satellites. The film cares about this objective about as much as you do introducing it with the line “The nerds in the lab call it the Pandora’s Box.” He then travels around sexing up women 30 years younger than him until he finds out the location of the bad guys and acquires a team of fellow misfits because regular solders don’t fit his punk rock style. And although one of them fills the marksman role it is never explained what exactly the other two do. One’s character introduction consists entirely of the guy being a really good DJ. After a discovery about the truth behind the bad guys, Xander must take a larger team to go destroy a bigger Pandora’s box.
But no one is watching this movie for the plot. People want adrenaline-fueled action and badassery. Sadly, the choreography of the film is surprisingly sub-par given the names associated with it. Tony Jaa is a fantastic martial artist and stuntman but there are too many fast edits to give us time to appreciate whatever he is doing. Too many of the stunts moves pulled off in the film have just been seen and done before. It also seems like the entire production is running on 1.25 speed. Every single line of dialogue is delivered so fast and with so little space to absorb it, it’s as if the editors just want to get to the next sequence as quickly as possible. A great example is when one character is told by Xander to stay in the boat and during the following fight scene he refuses to help because he was told to stay in the boat. He then crashes the boat into a bad guy and says “I was told to stay in the boat.” Now this punchline is very obvious and overdone, but for anyone who would like to reward it with a laugh the film moves so quickly you can barely catch a breath.
The acting is exactly what you would expect out of Ruby Rose and Vin Diesel. As much as I want to like Deepika Paudukone and Donnie Yen’s performance, everything feels very fake. But in fairness, I know Rory McCann is an amazing actor in his role as Game of Thrones‘ Sandor Clegane, so it’s most likely the cheesy writing and overall tone of the film that bring it down.
My rule of only seeing animated movies in 3D survives another weekend as it makes the film ultra HD but that’s about it. And unless you a large fan of the rebellious record scratches and metal of the early 2000’s I can’t imagine you’d need to see this in IMAX. Clearly a lot of fun and nostalgia went into making this movie. But it checks off the 2000’s rubric to point that it feels like a school project, and just isn’t very much fun.
