xXx: The Return of Xander Cage | Little White Lies

xXx: The Return of Xan­der Cage

19 Jan 2017 / Released: 19 Jan 2017

Words by Elena Lazic

Directed by DJ Caruso

Starring Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, and Vin Diesel

Two muscular individuals, a man and a woman, standing in a dimly lit environment with warm, orange lighting.
Two muscular individuals, a man and a woman, standing in a dimly lit environment with warm, orange lighting.
3

Anticipation.

The first film contained some genuinely great moments, but this second sequel looks decidedly short on ideas.

2

Enjoyment.

As cringeworthy as it is entertaining.

3

In Retrospect.

We’re back in the Xander zone but the next one better be real good.

Vin Diesel is back as the world’s tough­est, buffest secret agent. The results are thrilling and baf­fling in equal measure.

Arriv­ing in the still-smoul­der­ing tire marks of 2001’s The Fast and The Furi­ous, direc­tor Rob Cohen and star Vin Diesel treat­ed audi­ences to yet more high-speed thrills and spills with the first xXx movie. Diesel played Xan­der Cage, an extreme sports junkie recruit­ed against his will by the NSA to take down an under­ground Russ­ian crime ring bril­liant­ly dubbed Anar­chy 99’.

The actor’s ath­let­ic prowess pro­vid­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stage some thrilling action scenes – an unfor­get­table sequence has him rid­ing off on a motor­bike just as a build­ing explodes in flames below him – and also made of Xan­der Cage an uncon­ven­tion­al, mod­ern spe­cial agent. His unortho­dox meth­ods, tat­toos and con­sid­er­able swag­ger made him the per­fect pro­tag­o­nist for a mod­ern spy movie send-up.

An Amer­i­can POC James Bond with mus­cles who doesn’t takes him­self or his ludi­crous gad­gets half as seri­ous­ly as the British dou­ble agent, Cage seemed all but set up for his own fran­chise. But some­thing went wrong. Despite the film’s mod­er­ate suc­cess, Diesel decid­ed not to return for the 2005 sequel, xXx: State of the Union, and was sub­se­quent­ly replaced by Ice Cube. The film tanked and it’s tak­en 15 years for Diesel to pick up where he left off.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, xXx: The Return of Xan­der Cage fails to recap­ture the win­ning for­mu­la of the orig­i­nal, opt­ing instead for an Avengers-style team-up. Once again recruit­ed by force, Cage this time demands to be joined by a bunch of out­laws like him­self, each with their own spe­cial abil­i­ties, form­ing a clan he describes as the good, the extreme, and the com­plete­ly insane.” This weak riff on Ser­gio Leone’s clas­sic west­ern – just a lit­tle too pathet­ic to be endear­ing– sets the gen­er­al tone for the film’s dia­logue and humour, which runs the gamut from that’s what she said’ to your mum’.

What we have here is a film that crude­ly apes the Fast & Furi­ous movies, with each actor giv­en a chance to shine but bare­ly enough screen time for any real char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. Orange is the New Black star Ruby Rose appears as Adele Wolff, an expe­ri­enced sniper sub­ject to some pret­ty basic les­bian jokes. Thai star Tony Jaa, play­ing mar­tial arts expert Talon, is per­haps the most under­used of all, sec­ond only to Game of Thrones reg­u­lar Rory McCann who pops up as pet­ty thief Ten­nyson Torch.

On their quest to retrieve the Pandora’s Box – a device that allows any­one in its pos­ses­sion to con­trol satel­lites, effec­tive­ly turn­ing them into dead­ly mis­siles – Cage’s team is con­front­ed by a group of mer­ce­nar­ies who are unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tion. Rogue One star Don­nie Yen leads the pack as ex-spe­cial agent Xiang. He shines even more here, in less fran­ti­cal­ly edit­ed fight­ing scenes that allow his incred­i­ble skills to speak for them­selves. His part­ner in crime is Ser­e­na Unger (a pass­able Deepi­ka Padukone, the biggest Bol­ly­wood star at the moment) while Nicks (Chi­nese-Cana­di­an pop star and actor Kris Wu) is a DJ with dead­ly tricks who is more con­cerned with his music than mat­ters of inter­na­tion­al security.

As the car­toon­ish char­ac­ter names sug­gest, this three­quel thank­ful­ly shares some of the delight­ful­ly trashy action excess­es of the late 90s and ear­ly 2000s that made the first film so fun. Yet it stops short of the man­ic sin­cer­i­ty which ele­vat­ed that film’s hilar­i­ous nar­ra­tive leaps. Such extrav­a­gance is sim­ply not exe­cut­ed here with the same sense of glee, and is always a lit­tle too self-con­scious to be gen­uine­ly joy­ous. Accord­ing to this lat­est xXx film, tongue-in-cheek humour and brac­ing action sequences are mutu­al­ly exclusive.

Still, at times the film is a lot of fun. Like when Xan­der races down a busy road on a skate­board, then glides through a dry for­est on skis. The final 20 min­utes, in par­tic­u­lar, is entire­ly com­prised of stel­lar, unin­ter­rupt­ed action. At a his­tor­i­cal moment when being wary of the gov­ern­ment is a fair­ly relat­able sen­ti­ment, the film’s main theme ulti­mate­ly becomes that of a sim­ple choice between blind­ly trust­ing the state or retain­ing a degree of skepticism.

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