dgranger Review of xXx: Return of Xander Cage

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)

Great stunts and action in a pretty forgettable film.

[4/10 · 3 February 2017]

As the title says, this film has great stunts and action. But what this film doesn't have is a story or any dramatic tension at all. The film only served as an excuse to go from one over-the-top action scene to another using a cliché ridden ridiculous and unbelievable plot. What story there was in it was this: There is a weapon called Pandora's box that can make satellites fall out of the sky and kill people at will. The original prototype was used to kill Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) who is sitting in a cafe and trying to recruit a new spy. (Yes, that is just the first of the many unbelievable clinches used in this film - wiping out a whole town, killing everybody, by dropping a satellite on it right on the cafe where he is at, (wow, what remarkable aiming and knowledge of where he is), and he survives it while everyone else in town gets killed), while the realistic cheaper means of sending a professional agent/hit-man/assassin to kill Gibbons is never thought of or used). Then a team of highly trained stuntmen breach into a secure government building where a secret meeting high level is taking place and where someone was stupid enough to bring a new and improved version of Pandora's box to the meeting instead locking up that sucker in a secure vault somewhere. The device is stolen and everyone at the meeting is murdered, except for two people. Naturally one is a traitor and was in on the whole thing. And because the thieve showed that they where trained in extreme sports moves, there was no other man in the government similarly trained except Xander Cage and the government needs to bring him back from the dead (or really out of hiding). This where we get introduced to another of the film's clichés: the irrational snarling man (usually the government agent) that serves no other purpose other than go throughout the whole picture snarling at Cage and throwing insults and only ending as another obstacle Cage has to beat at the end. Naturally Cage recruits his own team of Triple xXx outsides and former Triple xXx agents in order to get the other guys. By the time Cage's finally recovers the stolen box, they find out that the other guys where also former Triple xXx agents too and they were trying save the world from the evil government. Wow! Another over used cliché:big government = evil, self serving egotistical anti-social rebels - good! When Cage returns the box to his superior, the government betrays him and his team and he has to get them in order to retrieve the box so that no-one can have the power to use it. That is the whole story. There is no dept to the characters at all except one: Adele Wolff who does some pretty cool stunts in her scenes. What this series needs to do is to go back to the original premise of the first one: there are some areas of the world and society that gentlemen agents like James Bond can't walk into and would get spotted right off while Cage can - aka: the anti-Bond world. And start with a solid story built realistically and logically from there to the wild. The original xXx showed that there is a whole section of the wealthy society that does the grunge thing and are not the type that would visit the casinos and nightclubs that Bond would go to. My advice is to save your money and wait for the video or cable showing of it.