Movie Review : xXx - Return of Xander Cage (2017)

Fictional secret agent never really took themselves seriously. I mean, James Bond lives in a bizarro world filled with cartoonishly evil people and military technology a twelve year old could've come up with; same for Derek Flint who was Bond's horny spiritual little brother and the several incarnation of the Mission Impossible team who all ended up fighting foreigners with access to a nuclear bomb. In fact, self-serious secret agents were extremely well-received in recent years. Series like Homeland or The Americans answered a demand for knowing what it's really like to work undercover for your country.

So why in a world where we still have Bond and Sterling Archer (two faces of the same coin) would we need a return of freakin' Xander Cage? That is the question I tried answering while watching xXx : Return of Xander Cage, one of the most befuddling moves I've seen all year.

I haven't seen the first two xXx movies, but xXx : Return of Xander Cage picks up with Samuel L. Jackson making a confusing recruiting pitch to Neymar Jr., who knocks a guy out with a napkin holder before both men are engulfed in flames. Someone is taking control of satellites and making them crash on Earth for an obscure reason, so Toni Collette (Jackson's replacement) beckons Xander Cage out of his fake death/retirement to investigate and retrieve something called Pandora's Box, a device capable of controlling satellite and enabling them as warheads. Why would anybody create such a device to turn satellites into weapons is beyond me, but let's just go with the flow, shall we?

So, I couldn't tell for the life of me whether xXx : Return of Xander Cage is a blissfully stupid or a terrible movie. It is quite adept at blurring the line. For example, there is a scene where Xander Cage climbs in a television tower to somehow steal the world cup signal for villagers. There are skis already in the tower, meant to facilitate his escape. Who the fuck put the skis there in the first place? Did he? Then why the fuck didn't he steal the signal then? The plot of xXx : Return of Xander Cage is just an excuse to make a series of spectacular scenes happen, which is made hilarious by its self-aware adrenaline junkie protagonist who just wants to do dangerous shit and bang beautiful women for the duration of the movie and... it's kind of what he does. 

Then, why am I not more enthusiastic about this movie?

I mean, it has motorcycles riding on water, ill-timed X games mementos, an awkward amount of sexual innuendo, bad guys wearing way too much leather, so why did I actually pause that movie twice to do other things? The concept of xXx : Return of Xander Cage is great, but its execution is just a little to self-serious to work. Xander Cage is too cool for his own good. Not only he can't lose, but he can't fail at anything and can't event do anything uncool. It's like Vin Diesel is not acting the same movie as the other characters and that other movie (with the satellite intrigue and all) is just not that great.

Everything about xXx : Return of Xander Cage has been telegraphed outside of a few key scenes. It's filled with long and repetitive gun fu scenes, martial arts scene you've seen in other movies (except for Michael Bisping's close quarter ass kicking) and, you know, for all its original and spectacular action scenes,  xXx : Return of Xander Cage runs out of gas about halfway through and falls back on good ol' firefights in order to wrap its narrative up. In other words, it starts off hilariously over-the-top and finishes just like any other high-octane action movies out there, which is even worse than being blissfully stupid.

xXx : Return of Xander Cage is a balancing act between blissfully stupid and terrible, but it edges towards the latter. It doesn't live up to its ambitions at all. Xander Cage is a self-aware protagonist, but it's not self-aware like... let's say Deadpool is. xXx : Return of Xander Cage tries to be the Saints Row of spy movies, but it doesn't nearly goes over the top enough to be that. It's bogged down just enough by cinema conventions to be a little bit of a bore. It's not an absolute bore, but it will make you pause it... or not pause it for bathroom breaks. I had high hopes of being entertained by the outlandishness of this movie, but it came off as too calculative for that. Turns out the world didn't need a Xander Cage comeback.