Movie Review -XXX: Return of Xander Cage

An essential requirement in watching movies, especially the action movie genre, is the suspension of belief. Movies are primarily meant to be escapist entertainment and this therefore exempts them from the rigour of plausibility.

Sometimes, a movie comes along that stretches the bounds of cinematic licence to the border of ludicrousness but doesn’t quite collapse the elasticity of latitude afforded it.

Then, there is always that one movie that upends cinematic licence, stretches permissible suspension of belief until the elasticity of latitude snaps, and when the snapped rubber band in recoil hits it on the cheek, it confuses an insult to audience intelligence for tongue-in-cheek coolness.

In 2002, one year after he gave us the bulked-up street racer recidivist Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious, Vin Diesel gave us the bulked-up and tattooed extreme-sport enthusiast recidivist Xander Cage in XXX.

Fifteen years since we last saw his Toretto clone, Vin Diesel resurrects him, fur coat-wearing machismo, cheesy double-entendres and all in a pointless sequel to an even more pointless franchise that is XXX: Return of Xander Cage.

Like an extremely bad joke, the retro video game-ish opening credits sequence provided an early inkling that this was going to be an extremely stupid movie. The successive trio of fast-paced montage of introductory scene sequences have got to hold the record for the most annoyingly effusive and inanely elaborate stunt sequences in recent movie history.

Overwrought stunt sequences aside, the movie ventured shamelessly and with as much gusto into demeaning sexual objectification of female supporting cast and extras fawning over the contrived machismo of a leading man acting all too glad to proclaim his sexual prowess.

But the joke was on him when a supposedly post-orgy scene with a bevy of female extras has them all pretending to look worn out whilst actually looking like dolled-up mannequin types straight out of a lingerie shoot pose for vogue magazine with nary an evidence of an orgy having taken place.

In terms of storyline, Return of Xander Cage could barely conceal the fact that it was a far less impressive knock off of anyone and all of the Fast and Furious 6, Furious 7 and the Fate of the Furious movies.

The Satellite controlling device called “Pandora’s Box” in Return of Xander Cage could very well have been “God’s Eye” in Furious 7 and the Fate of the Furious. Xander spurning the CIA’s team assigned to work with him whilst insisting on picking his own team bore more than a passing resemblance to Dominic Toretto insisting on working with his own handpicked Team in Fast and Furious 6. Toni Collette’s platinum blonde CIA Agent, Jane Marke was an obvious knock off of Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody in Furious 7 and the Fate of the Furious.

Just as Xander’s ample biceps were no doubt pumped full with steroids, The Return of Xander was chuck full of the stereotypical ingredients of shallow and pointless action movies; over-the-top stunt sequences that scream overcompensating more than impressive, cheesy one liners that annoy more than they make you laugh, braggadocios acts of machismo that elicit eyeballs rolling in discontentment more than jaws dropping in awe, and all-round silliness that was originally intended to come across as being cool but winds up achieving the opposite.

Nothing was more indicative of the fact that the Return of Xander was a predictable and pointless hodgepodge of stereotypical action movie gags than the final scene with a fully decked-out black choir rendering a histrionic performance of a praise song whilst a white church audience affects an unconvincing and non-rhythmic sing-along.

XXX: Return of Xander is such a crass and unimpressive mess that were there to be a cinematic equivalent of Cinema’s Got Talent, it will earn itself a triple X buzz the second its opening credits start rolling.3/10