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The Bill Reviews 'xXx: Return of Xander Cage' – More Fun Than It Should Have Been

It's been 15 years since the first xXx film hit the big screens, 12 years since the entirely forgettable sequel, xXx: State of the Union, and now we have xXx: Return of Xander Cage. It is almost a relief that we can still get the occasional mindless action film that doesn't think too much of itself and focuses more on having a fun time with it's antics than on sending deep messages. If you like deep character arcs and detailed plots, this probably isn't the film for you.

When the leader of the xXx program, NSA Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) is out on a recruiting run, a satellite drops out of orbit and explodes on top of Gibbons location. A short time later, during a secret meeting of top officials at the CIA headquarters, a group of four individuals attack the meeting and steal a device called Pandora's Box, capable of hacking satellites and causing them to crash on any location the user wishes. One of the surviving CIA leaders, Jane Marke (Toni Collette) sets out to find extreme athlete turned extreme secret agent Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) who has spent the time since the first film living in exile.

After bringing together a group of similar thrill-seekers, including sharpshooter Adele Wolff (Ruby Rose), DJ Harvard "Nicks" Zhou (Kris Wu) and getaway driver Tennyson "The Torch" (Rory McCann), they set out to hunt down the thieves Xiang (Donnie Yen), Serena (Deepika Padukone), Talon (Tony Jaa), and Hawk (Michael Bisping), to recover Pandora's Box, and to discover who (if anyone) had set the theft in motion to begin with.

From the opening credits, which are a large montage of zooming around satellites as the first one becomes spun up to take its nose-dive on Gibbons, it sets the mood for the film. You settle in knowing that it's going to be garish, splashy, action film – in the vein of Last Action Hero. It's from crazy chase to crazy chase. There's a dirt bike chase that winds up with both riders throwing a switch which puts down skis and they move their chase from land to running town a crashing wave tube. Xander's bike even becomes entirely submerged when the wave crashes over him, but he then pops out of the top of it and keeps on going.

Of course any combustion engine that gets submerged for a length of time will take in water and kill the motor as dead as a doornail. But if you've come to see xXx, you kind of know what you're going to get into. Half of the stunts that both teams go through, even if they were to survive, they would be so badly injured they'd be laid up for a week. Hacking a satellite and firing it's navigational thrusters might be one thing, but having the ability to drop it on a target with pinpoint accuracy?  That's about where anyone inclined to fact-checking of the science of the film will start getting a facial tick.

All that being said, it really should only be a 3.5-5 out of 10, but this is one of those times that what takes it up a few points is that it comes across that the cast is just having a blast of a time in the film. It's really kind of infectious, whether it's a fight breaking out in zero-g as a a cargo plane goes into a dive, or laughing at the banter and jokes. There's even safeword joke (hint: it's kumquat). Remember how much fun Ocean's 11 was to watch? It was mostly because of the ensemble cast having as much of a party together on screen as well as off.

It's popcorn-fluff, it's the cinematic equivalent of greasy fast food. If that's your thing, you're likely to have a fun time and get your money's worth. If you want something more cerebral, logical, or well acted – look elsewhere. If you're on the fence, then hang back and just catch it when it comes on Netflix or Amazon Prime in a few months. But if you do wait until then, you'll be missing out on the not one, but two, direct references to Avengers made in xXx.

After those, I think I had a bit more fun thinking back over the film and pretending it was all happening in the MCU.

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