Review of xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017) by Dillon L — 16 Mar 2017

This is the best XXX movie yet, and is everything that all but the best James Bond movies should be. The cast is really great, action is great, and the script is sharp in a very self-conscious way. The one liners were obviously crafted with love because they are craptastic in just the right way.

The cast is surprisingly competent and loaded with talent. Other than Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen is particularly charismatic, and he with Tony Jaa, and Kris Wu prove that Asian men with accents can play a variety of roles in Holywood movies successfully. In the age of whitewashing, it is refreshing to see an international cast with actors of various backgrounds, speaking with different accents. The cast actually resembles the real world, and the full spectrum of humanity more than most. That being said, it is still a muscle bound sexist as f ultra-violent uber-patriotic-disguised-as-anti-establishment spy movie.

The action sequences and extreme tricks are predictably unrealistic, overdone, and not that cool, but they are entertaining. Whereas the first XXX tried to sell itself as cool, this third installation finally struck the right balance between self-conscious humor and all-out action. That is to say that all realism is thrown out the door, yet the cast sells their actions as serious, and all but the most impressionable (or most rigid) viewers are left with a light-hearted and very entertaining movie.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT.

I thought that by not calling this movie XXX3, or XXXXXXXXX, they were trying to erase the second movie with Ice Cube. I can't remember a recent movie scene where I was as pleasantly surprised to see an unexpected return character as I was when Darius Stone showed up with his grenade launcher. By the end of the movie there was quite a collection of extreme action spies assembled, so I am hoping that they make ten or twelve more of these so I don't have to think too hard about what I want to watch. If they make a bunch of them, I hope they go all in on the titles and start making them more and more ridiculous like "XXX 10: Infinity.".