xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)

Starring: Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Toni Collette, Deepika Padukone, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Kris Wu, Tony Gonzalez, Michael Bisping, Samuel L. Jackson, Ice Cube, Neymar, and Nicky Jam
Grade: B-

Despite reaching levels of corny not previously thought to be possible, xXx: Return of Xander Cage is a solid action movie just good enough to save a franchise thought to be dead.

Summary

As a satellite crashes towards Earth, NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons (Jackson) tries to convince famous footballer Neymar to join the xXx Program in a diner. He turns down the offer, saying he’s no hero. Without a fight, Gibbons goes towards the door but when a guy tries to hold up the diner at gunpoint, Neymar kicks a napkin holder at the guy and knocks him out. Gibbons praises his heroic abilities and is about to try to convince him to join, but the satellite crashes into the diner and kills them both.

At CIA Headquarters in New York City, we see Serena (Padukone) and Hawk (Bisping) discreetly break in. There’s a meeting in place where CIA Agent Jane Marke (Collette) shows her subordinates the device that crashed the satellite and killed Gibbons. It’s referred to as “Pandora’s Box”. Her team backtracked the satellite’s last signal input to Miami. Someone was found at the Ritz-Carlton using it to try and hold the world ransom, but her agents broke in and confiscated it. With the push of a button, Pandora’s Box can eavesdrop on secure communications, corrupt military software, transmit false intelligence, or crash a satellite out of the sky like a warhead. She accuses someone within the meeting of being behind it. Before they can go any further, Xiang (Yen) jumps through the glass roof and steals Pandora’s Box directly from her hand. He fights off everyone in the room and escapes. He’s almost cornered in the hallway, but Hawk takes out the guy. Afterwards, Xiang leads Hawk and Serena right out the front door. This is where Xiang’s last henchman Talon (Jaa) joins them and takes out another guy. Now, they have the one device that could cause a global power shift. They need someone who can go to war with these guys and save the world. Jane Marke has an idea…

Enter Xander Cage (Diesel), the man that inspired the xXx Program.

Previously thought to be dead, it turns out Cage faked his death and is living in Santino Domingo, Dominican Republic. After stealing some device to power the cable of everyone in a small village, he hangs with his girlfriend Lola. Later, he sits on a park bench in a public area to look at his map, and some stranger strikes up a conversation with him that seems out of the ordinary. Once the guy leaves, Cage finds a bomb in the suitcase under the bench he was sitting on and isn’t surprised in the slightest. Soldiers move in on him, and Cage quickly disarms the first guy and fires the gun into the crowd because he knows the gun has blanks in them. Once again, he knows this whole thing is a set up just like how Gibbons tried to do a similar thing to him in a diner years ago in the first xXx. He’s not falling for it and calls Gibbons out, only to get Jane Marke. After Cage explains how he knew this was all a set up by pointing out the intricate details they messed up on, she explains how Gibbons never believed Cage was dead and kept on looking for him. Cage doesn’t really care until she notes Gibbons died. In a church, Marke explains the seriousness of who they’re up against and how they can’t identify these guys on any database anywhere. She offers him the job to get revenge for Gibbons. It takes some convincing, but Cage agrees to it and heads straight to London to meet a “ghost hunter”. This is Ainsley (Hermione Corfield), a woman who can track anyone but is currently on house arrest.

They flirt a little bit because there’s some sort of unknown history between the two, but she still turns down his affections. Instead, she sends all the other women in her place to fuck him instead.

These two have a very odd friendship.

Anyway, she gives him the information the next morning but warns him how serious this group is, even telling him to not pursue it in general. Cage thanks her and joins Marke in her car. Apparently, the group they’re after hangs out at some jungle rave in the Philippines.

In the Philippines, Serena approaches Xiang with a gun, demanding to know why Xiang hasn’t destroyed Pandora’s Box yet. He argues they can get what they want with it and welcomes the world to come after them. She’s pissed. To scare him, she fires her gun right next to Xiang’s head, but he barely flinches. In the Royal Air Force Station in Lakenheath, United Kingdom, Marke tells Cage that after he defeated Anarchy 99 in the first xXx, Gibbons was given a blank check. This is why they’re able to afford this souped-up plane the two will use for their mission. On the plane, Cage is introduced to Agent Becky Clearidge (Dobrev). She worked with Gibbons, is a Xander Cage superfan, and will handle tech support/gadgetry for the mission. Following this, Cage meets Captain Paul Donovan (Gonzalez) and his other soldiers, but Cage isn’t impressed with them whatsoever. He refuses to work with them. As he talks shit to Donovan, he hooks him and his soldiers up to a cargo load and parachutes them off the plane. Despite anyone else being court martialed or being reprimanded in any way for performing such an act, Marke instead relents and allows him to create his own team that he can trust.

Cage then recruits people he’s worked with before. First, there’s Adele Wolff (Rose), a sniper who spends her time stopping hunters from killing lions by shooting them. Second, there’s Tennyson Torch (Rory McCann) a stunt driver who is seen getting arrested for crashing into an ATM. Lastly, there’s Nicky “Nicks” Zhou (Wu) who is basically just a DJ.

They collect the team and head off to Manilla, though when Marke tries to lay down the law with the team about how she’s the boss, they all laugh her off. After the group messes with the gadgets, they land in the Caramoan Islands in the Philippines. They get to the small island where the party is at and offer some guns in exchange to be able to hang there and lay low for a while. Tennyson stays with the boat, while Cage, Adele, and Nicks go into the party. Adele leaves the two and hangs from a tree in sniper position. Shortly after, Xiang and Cage make eye contact, and Xiang sends Talon after him. As he inches closer, Nicks takes over the DJ booth and the crowd goes crazy, getting into Talon’s way and allowing Cage to get out of harm’s way. He walks into Serena who deduces Cage is looking for someone. They start pointing their weapons at each other until Xiang interrupts. The three sit down and have a drink, with Xiang getting right to the point. He pulls out Pandora’s Box, and Cage admits it’s the only thing he wants. After Xiang tests the both of them by throwing live grenades on the table and forcing them to hold it in place so they won’t explode, he reveals they’re all “xXx” agents. They just have different agendas. Serena wants to destroy Pandora’s Box, but Xiang wants to use it. He also has no interest in letting Cage take it back to the NSA. Russian soldiers storm the camp, and a shootout ensues, with Cage chasing Xiang for Pandora’s Box. Eventually, Cage is able to secure it after they crash in the ocean during a dirt bike chase. Xiang is nowhere to be found, but he is alive.

Cage comes out of the water with it, but Serena shoots it out of his hand and destroys it, saying it’s what Gibbons would’ve wanted. Cage’s team shows up and tells him another satellite crashed. Cage suggests they team up with Serena instead against whatever the larger villain at hand is that’s threatening to crash more satellites every 24 hours. An even bigger twist is that Becky realizes the Pandora’s Box they’ve been chasing was only a prototype that controlled one satellite. There’s another one, and the bad guys have the real one. With Cage leading one group and Xiang leading the other, the race is on to get this device and either save or destroy the world.

My Thoughts:

As much praise as I gave the first xXx and Vin Diesel for what they were, xXx: Return of Xander Cage represents exactly what I hate about Diesel now. Just like how Baywatch seemed to be written to stroke Dwayne Johnson’s cock, the third film in this franchise seems to do precisely the same for Vin Diesel. I thought the Fast and Furious movies were enough of an ego booster for him, but I was unpleasantly surprised at how far they went with this one.

Everyone praises Cage for everything he does, and he just smiles because you can tell he 100% agrees with it. It’s nonstop too! As soon as he’s brought on the plane, they introduce Becky who basically says he’s cooler than Guns N’ Roses and talks about how badly she wants to fuck him. Later, they even bring back Ice Cube’s Darius Stone just to tell Cage how fucking awesome he is, saying it would be an honor to work with the “legendary Xander Cage” in an incredibly cringeworthy scene where their manufactured handshake feels so forced you want to look away. Then, there’s one scene that I can honestly say is on the list for one of the most infuriating I’ve ever seen. This is where his contact Ainsley sends in maybe ten to fifteen hot women into his room, and it’s implied he has sex with every last one of them. The next morning, all of the women are undressed and sleeping, as if I’m supposed to believe a nearly fifty-year-old Xander Cage satisfied EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! Never have I seen a group of scenes to suck off the metaphorical cock of the star quite like we see in xXx: Return of Xander Cage. If you’re going to sit there and tell me Diesel had no input in this script, you’re fucking lying to yourself! He’s not even in that great of shape anymore! There’s no way he has that type of stamina! Are you kidding me?! If he was still jacked like he used to be, you could MAYBE get away with this, but this is a VISIBLY older Diesel. They even write in Becky talking about how big Cage’s arms are when she’s flirting, but I started laughing because of how average they actually look.

At some point, you have to come to terms with your age and write your characters around it. It took Will Smith awhile, but he finally figured it out in Bad Boys for Life. When will Diesel figure it out? This includes the regular action scenes too. Now, I understand this is a movie and there’s going to be some stuff that happens that normal people can’t do. This is why I loved the chase scene between Diesel and Donnie Yen’s Xiang on top of the moving semi-trucks and onto the ground. It was awesome, but they completely lost me when Cage flat-out clears a moving car while running.

You heard that right.

He wasn’t on a skateboard or on a dirt bike or something (which would’ve made sense for the character). He just jumped over it at full speed. Following this, he side flips off another car in pursuit of Xiang. Are you fucking joking?! I don’t even think Diesel in his prime could pull this off convincingly!! This was ridiculous! Donnie Yen doing it makes sense but an aging Vin Diesel doing it? Hell no!

Also, the script gets as groan-inducing as you might think. This exchange is a good example:

Cage: “I’m gonna have to take it out kamikaze style.”
Other person: “Don’t do it. It’s suicide.”

Yeah, we know. That’s what “kamikaze” means.

Though we get some glimpses of what made the franchise what it was before like with the extreme sports action in the beginning, Xander Cage up to his old tricks in fighting the man, and a Vin Diesel that lightens up a bit, it definitely doesn’t have the cool factor the original film had. Then again, maybe the first film was cool just because it was such a product of the time. It’s hard to say. Regardless, compared to xXx: State of the Union, Return of Xander Cage looks like The Godfather. It’s easily the second-best entry in the xXx franchise. The spirit and effort are there, but along with the coolness of it all being lost, the lack of the original’s heart and style is evident. This is important because it’s what made the franchise popular. I also think it’s a lot goofier this time around compared to the first xXx because we can’t take Vin Diesel seriously anymore. Despite the story being centered around the return of the iconic character, Cage wasn’t nearly as big of a focus as he should’ve been. A lot of it was on the star-studded cast. Though it definitely worked in attracting attention to the film, I think this was done because they didn’t trust that this movie would be a huge hit without it. This is mostly because without the Fast and Furious franchise, Diesel being your leading man doesn’t translate to huge success like it used to. Because of this, xXx: Return of Xander Cage felt like an entirely different movie from the others in the franchise. The jury is still out on if that’s a good thing or not.

I would vote not.

As I mentioned before, they try to inject much more humor like with the opening sequence and the captions describing new characters that are all played up for laughs, but I didn’t think it fit the series. Additionally, Samuel L. Jackson completely forgot how to play Gibbons. I understand how there was a lot of time between this film and xXx: State of the Union, and he’s played a hundred characters since then, but the traces of the real Gibbons felt gone. Here, he played it like Samuel L. Jackson. He could’ve at least watched the other two movies to remind himself how to play it, but it looked like he just got lazy and assumed the hair and scarred face would be enough to make people forget how Gibbons used to be.

As I mentioned before in the opening of this review, the levels of corniness this film reaches are unprecedented. Look, I appreciate that Diesel understands how iconic the fur coat look was to the first xXx, but the scene in which he goes and gets it is in a temperate climate. All the women in the room are dressed normally, and he’s sitting there with this outlandish coat looking like Big Bird. It was so forced and stupid-looking, it comes off as an unintentional joke. It made sense in the first movie because it at least looked cold in the Czech Republic, but the majority of this movie took place in warmer areas. Also, taking the movie to the Dominican Republic and the Philippines gave off a very Fast and Furious vibe, not a xXx vibe. You honestly could play the jungle rave scene out of context to someone, and they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two franchises. I wasn’t clamoring for an Eastern European location or anything, but you have to make the look of the movie at least a little different from Diesel’s other main franchise.

*Can someone tell me why Serena doesn’t call Cage out for faking the shot of alcohol he has with her and Xiang? It was obvious as all hell he doesn’t do it, and she sat across from him and watched it happen! During this part of the movie, they were not friends, so it doesn’t make any sense why she would let him get away with his horrible acting.*

Still, this is worth seeing for action movie fans because the fighting and action sequences are still top notch. Additionally, we got an all-star cast. We got action heroes (Diesel, Yen, Tony Jaa, Jackson, Cube), a rapper (Wu), a soccer legend (Neymar), a football legend (Tony Gonzalez), and a UFC legend (Michael Bisping). The obvious cons of the film were the underutilization of this huge cast (making it longer to give the teams bigger roles/lines would’ve helped), Ruby Rose being barely there despite the heavy marketing of her, and extremely cheesy Vin Diesel moments that made me think screenwriters had the mission of “let’s act like Vin Diesel is the baddest dude on the planet and make sure everyone feeds his ego as much as possible”. If you can get past this, xXx: Return of Xander Cage is pretty solid and another fun entry into this outrageous franchise. It makes me excited to think how they’ll top this in the next film because this one is so over-the-top, I’m not even sure where you could go next with it.

If anyone could find a way to make the action more ridiculous however, it would be Vin Diesel.

Fun Fact: Jet Li was supposed to be one of the main bad guys (I’m assuming Donnie Yen’s role) but had to drop out. Conor McGregor was initially supposed to play Michael Bisping’s role, but he had to drop out of it to train for his next fight. Assuming that they didn’t change much to the character when Bisping took over, underusing one of the top box office attractions in the UFC in McGregor like that would’ve been a travesty. I mean, they didn’t use Bisping as much as they should’ve but to not let McGregor speak that much would’ve been an incredible disservice to a star of his caliber. Hopefully in a sequel, he can be the lead bad guy or something, and maybe Jet Li could still be added.

Can you imagine Vin Diesel, Conor McGregor, and Jet Li in the same movie? Now that’s a xXx worth watching!