Triple X-tremely Dumb
Director: D.J. Caruso
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Starring: Vin Diesel, Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Ruby Rose, Kris Wu, Rory McCann, Toni Collette, Samuel L. Jackson
12 years since shuffling off an unavailable Vin Diesel for Ice Cube, the xXx franchise has returned, to bank upon the star quality of The Fast and The Furious lead. After faking his death, Xander Cage (Diesel) is brought back to stop a dangerous device called Pandora's Box, which can be used to bring down satellites.
It's clear the filmmakers are looking to Diesel's other franchise for inspiration, as Xander Cage is no longer going it alone. Instead, the one man army is now surrounded with a bland team of forgettable cohorts. While each are given quirks of their own, what's forgotten are reasons to give a damn about them. Instead, director D.J Caruso overloads on half-hearted action, while casting a disregard for logic. Though any scene where Donnie Yen partakes in hand to hand combat is worth the watch.
One gets the feeling Caruso is frightened of having too many talking scenes, which would explain why one table set scene randomly turns into playing hot potato with a grenade. Still, Vin Diesel appears to be having a blast. But when the script makes nearly all the female characters have the hots for him, one can see why.
It doesn't take a genius to see that xXx: Return of Xander Cage was made with future instalments in mind. If those hopes become a reality, then here's hoping future instalments can deliver something resembling character work and fun bouts of action, as this instalment fails on both fronts.
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