Starring: Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette, Samuel L. Jackson
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2017
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When the first ‘xXx’ cruised into multiplexes in 2002, its star Vin Diesel was coming fresh off 2001’s surprise hit ‘The Fast and the Furious.’ Despite helping to build Diesel’s image, ‘xXx’ was not the kind of film that warranted a mainstream audience; its action was based around lead character Xander Cage’s X Games style extreme stunts, its music incorporated heavy rock (metal band Rammstein made a cameo appearance) and most of its plot took place in Eastern Europe. I only caught the film last year, as I was holed up in a hotel with nothing else on television. It was not my cup of tea, but it had an undeniable (albeit niche) charm that one had to acknowledge, and possibly even respect.
In the sequel, ‘xXx: State of the Union’, Cage was replaced by Darius Stone (Ice Cube), Augustus Gibbons’ (Samuel L. Jackson) latest recruit into the xXx program. I have not seen ‘State of the Union’, and its cold reviews (noting particularly its reliance on CG action) don’t make the prospect tempting. I take it that the move from Diesel to Ice Cube was accompanied by a soundtrack switch too, with hip hop replacing the first film’s rock. It’s telling that hip hop has been replaced in turn for this third instalment by electronic dance music, or EDM, the most broadly appealing and mass-produced genre in contemporary music, as the franchise too has been re-engineered to be as broadly appealing as possible. In the years since his last outing as Cage, Diesel shepherded the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise with its diverse cast and insane stunts to enormous global success. He’s attempted a similar move here, with a sprawling and global cast accompanying its bevy of set pieces, but it doesn’t feel right. I felt that I had to respect the first film’s boldness, but ‘Return of Xander Cage’ fails by asking too nicely.
Xander’s overarching mantra as an extreme athlete has always been to rail against ‘the man’, never ceding to the interests of big business and standing up to those who seek power. In our reintroduction to Diesel’s bald beefcake, he is climbing a huge aerial in Brazil, where he unfastens and pockets some sort of boxy gadget. He skis and downhill skateboards down the rocky mountainside (yes, he skis through a rainforest) while his phone counts ten minutes down to zero. We’d be forgiven for awaiting an explosion, but his countdown is to the start of an international football match, and his newly acquired box allows the poor residents of a small village to pirate the television transmission signal. Business must be slow for Xander to be risking his neck for this kind of purely sentimental payoff.
Soon enough, he gets re-enlisted to the xXx program by Toni Collette’s government suit Jane Marke. She tells him about the film’s Macguffin, a bit of tech called the ‘Pandora’s Box’ that allows the holder to tap into and control any satellite orbiting the Earth. So far, the holder has been using it to weaponise satellites, sending them plunging down to destroy programmed targets. Though Marke originally held the Pandora’s Box, it was stolen in a brazen raid by a group of highly athletic and skilled criminals led by Xiang (Donnie Yen) – there’s Serena (Deepika Padukone), Talon (Tony Jaa) and Hawk (Michael Bisping). Marke gives Xander his orders – get a team together and get the Box back – and he enlists Adele (Ruby Rose), Nicks (Kris Wu) and Tennyson (Rory McCann) to join his team. Adele is a skilled sniper, Tennyson is a stunt driver of dubious ability, and Nicks, well Nicks is just along because he’s fun. Seriously, he brings nothing to the table except for the ability to DJ. There’s also Agent Clearidge (Nina Dobrev), their attractive tech support who provides plenty of awkward flirting along with the equipment.
The foursome head to the Phillipines, where Xiang and his crew are hiding out. From here, the plot lurches through a variety of ‘twists’, crosses and double-crosses, peppered with dialogue that might have read wittily on the page but lands dully when performed by the mixed ability cast, only serving to remind the audience that what they’re watching is supposed to be a fun and light hearted action romp. But the stakes of the film are supposed to be so high (it’s phrased as ‘saving the world’ more than once) that it doesn’t quite gel. Indeed, much of the generic gunplay-based action is tension free, because the overall tone is a lark, so you never suspect for a second that anyone might sustain more than a flesh wound. Donnie Yen gets a couple of decent fight sequences that hold on him without cutting for longer than a second, but director D.J. Caruso with his editors Vince Filippone and Jim Page chop every other sequence up until it’s borderline unfollowable and frankly dull. The few bright spots arrive when the picture sticks to its X Games roots – Xander riding a motorbike atop the ocean, or freefalling fall from a crashing plane.
Xander began as a poster boy for the anarchists’ revolution, but this movie is such a clearly manufactured experience, designed to tick off all the boxes to maximize its box office take, that he’s lost his edge. ‘xXx’, for all its faults, took risks, something that Xander Cage would have liked. ‘Return of Xander Cage’ would certainly disappoint its titular hero.
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