xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)
Directed by D.J. Caruso
Xander Cage is left for dead after an incident, though he secretly returns to action for a new, tough assignment with his handler Augustus Gibbons.
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Think of xXx: Return of Xander Cage as a blend of The Expendables and The Avengers by way of the Extreme Sports Channel (“The Home of Action Sports”), and you’ve pretty much got it.
If the fights between Cage’s team and Xiang’s team remind you of “The Avengers,” it’s because they are supposed to, and if Xander Cage suggests the low-brow, globe-trotting James Bond for our extreme-sports, cage-fighting, tyrannical times, that is also deliberate.
The latter may bring him full circle in his flirting with Point Break — starring in an ostensible high-octane do-over, then channelling its thrill-seeking into xXx, only to be followed by a real extreme sports remake, and then upping the ante in this latest effort — but the slick mess of stunts and violence that eventuates quickly turns monotonous.
The first xXx has a very similar Point Break -ish extreme-dudes-gang infiltration plot.
Given that he was killed off in a throwaway line at the beginning of 2005’s XXX: State of the Union, it seems unlikely that anyone but actor Vin Diesel was clamoring for the return of extreme sports-loving secret agent Xander Cage.
And now, almost 15 years since inking up his Eternian-proportioned torso to play Xander Cage in the first xXx movie (dodging a bullet that hit Ice Cube full on with 2005's woeful xXx: State Of The Union), here he is again, ripened and ready to save another day — or should that be franchise?
The movie was largely met with apathy, and Diesel didn’t even bother to return for the 2005 sequel xXx: State of the Union.
Diesel’s mumbly beefcake Cage was killed off in the Ice Cube-headlined 2005 bomb xXx: State of the Union, and with a brazen and perhaps wise lack of explanation, we’re greeted by the sight of a very-alive Cage dive-bombing off a satellite, skiing through jungle brush and skateboarding down a hillside like Marty McFly on Creatine, while high-fiving locals in the Brazilian slum he’s apparently been living.
Chapter 2, “XXX: State of the Union” (2005) had Ice Cube stepping in for the reportedly deceased Cage.
Xander is given a massive plane, a treasure trove of weapons, a bespectacled and thirsty IT technician (Nina Dobrev looking like she’s rebooting the first half of “She’s All That”) and the go-ahead to bring in his own team.
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Even Nina Dobrev’s geeky computer expert gets a True Lies-ish moment of heroism while Tony Jaa is overjoyed to be a ruffian.
Much like “Kingsman: The Secret Service” in 2015, it’s nostalgic for the action films of yesteryear.
In Cage’s absence, Bond has gotten grittier, numerous other spy movies from the Bourne franchise to the hip Kingsman: The Secret Service have additionally taken over, and frankly the Harold and Kumar movies lampooned the extreme sports dudes thing to a point where they couldn’t be any more ridiculous.
Essentially turning the movie into a cross between the Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious franchises, screenwriter F. Scott Frazier, director D.J. Caruso and Diesel himself (as both producer and star) surround Cage with a multicultural team of badasses, a staple of the more recent F&F movies.
Considering its intent as a “modern” 007-ish franchise, it’s worth noting that it out-grossed every James Bond film up to that point domestically even if Die Another Day eclipsed it just three months later.
There’s a moment in Return of Xander Cage where Diesel is pursuing Donnie Yen to retrieve the movie’s MacGuffin, and they’re both on motorbikes that suddenly sprout skis as the chase continues into the sea, then they climax the sequence by tube-rinding a wave on those ski-bikes in what might supplant both Escape From L.A. ’s surfing bit and Die Another Day ’s tsunami stunt as the silliest of its kind for all time.
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Throw in some Kingsman: The Secret Service -style cheekiness and the flashy bullet-time effects popularized by The Matrix three years before xXx ’s 2002 debut, and you’ve got a basic idea of what director D.J. Caruso is working with here.
The action is huge fun, and while it never approaches the heights of, say, the recent insta-classic, John Wick, director DJ Caruso shows flair for staging, choreography and, most importantly, editing; while still well within the framework of modern rapid-cut action construction, you can always tell what’s going on.