XxX: The Return of Xander Cage reviewed
When you have a movie with the implausible premise that extreme sports enthusiasts are more badass than Special Forces operators, you’re going to need a lot of explosions to suspend that sense of disbelief. Fortunately, this third outing in the XxX series delivers that and quite a bit more.
Rather than being an euphemism for adult entertainment, XxX is the codename of a secret government programme that recruits the worlds best extreme sports enthusiasts to handle black bag jobs that conventional grunts and firepower can’t solve. The first movie showed Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) running circles around Russian mobsters and Ice Cube doing much of the same on domestic US terrorists in the second movie. This third outing is equal parts franchise reboot and sequel as it brings back older characters, ties up loose ends and adds in new ones to boot with an eclectic cast that includes the likes of Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Toni Collette, Tony Jaa and Ruby Rose. This time out, Vin Diesel revisits the role of the eponymous Xander Cage and, like its predecessors, dials everything to eleven from the get-go.
Explosive Outcomes
The movie kicks off with NSA agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L Jackson) attempting to recruit another XxX agent at a downtown Chinese eatery. He’s fairly up to speed on contemporary Cantonese cuisine and orders the good stuff before pitching his spiel to the new recruit, top footballer Newmay Jr. Unfortunately, he gets interrupted as someone attempts to assassinate him. Car bombs, SUVs full of gun toting hitmen and rocket launchers are passe for the likes of a XxX movie. This time around, whoever wants to take Gibbons out tosses a satellite at him. Yes, a honking huge satellite. From orbit. Needless to say, Gibbons gets wiped off the map along with a good chunk of downtown Brazil. And that’s only the beginning.
After Gibbons untimely demise, Cage gets recruited back into the XxX programme through a ridiculously implausible interview. He then rustles up a posse of unlikely sidekicks that include a borderline mental stuntman played by the Hound of Game of Thrones fame (Rory McCann), a sassy sniper (Ruby Rose), a street savvy DJ (Kris Wu) and a weapons specialist (Nina Dobrev) to hunt down a rogue team of XxX agents lead by Donnie Yen who have nicked a MacGuffin that can bring down satellites from orbit as a weapon of mass destruction and who ostensibly killed Gibbons.
The rest of the movie follows a predictable plotline with little deviation, mostly acting as a means to string the various action set pieces together. In that aspect, they’ve at least concocted a reason, however implausible it may be as to why everyone is globe trotting around blowing things up in scenic locations. You won’t have time to stare at the plot holes though as the tempo doesn’t slow down with the team goes through an array of action sequences that involve stacking on even more explosions and firefights on top of each other like a Jenga tower of incendiary goodness. Donnie Yen isn’t exactly a fountain of exposition and lets his fists do the talking and boy do they talk as multiple hapless goons meet their demise at his hands and Diesel, naturally, blows everything up in an epic fireball while saving the day. You’re not going to take home anything noteworthy here but as far as popcorn fare goes, this comes highly recommended.
Director Rob Cohen
Cast Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Ice Cube, Rory McCann