XXX: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE

XONTAINX XPOILERX

It's now fifteen years since the first XXX movie, and twelve years since it sputtered to a close with the Diesel-free follow-up. How many Vin Diesel franchises are there that you'd have expected to die off after the frankly underwhelming second one in which Mr Diesel didn't show up? (Fast And Furious doesn't really count - that didn't really pick up until Part 4 AND he was only in the teaser of Part 3, which actually takes place between Parts 6 and 7 anyway.) And it doesn't look like they've spent the intervening years fine-tuning the concept for a triumphant blockbuster return; rather it looks like they've simply sat down with any number of Mission Impossibles and other assorted globetrotting knockabouts, then hired a particularly excitable fourteen-year-old boy to knit them together.

That would explain why the film's line of demented action sequences include a motorbike chase through the jungle onto the beach and then into the sea, where the bike sprouts skis! And Vin Diesel and Donnie Yen chase each other through the surf! It would explain the oh-no-not-again MacGuffin of yet another whizzy computer gizmo, this time one that can send satellites plummeting to Earth. And it would also explain why the film is heaving with numerous hot chicks mercilessly objectified under the camera's pubescent gaze. Even the bespectacled techie nerd is an only slightly dressed-down Miss October. In anonymous retirement in the Dominican Republic, Xander Cage (Diesel) is brought back into the XXX program to retrieve a terrifying electronic plot device that has been audaciously stolen from American Intelligence but Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands. Assembling his own team of specialist mavericks and lunatics (in favour of hardass, dumbass Marines), Cage tracks down the team who stole the toy in the first place...

Of course it doesn't make a whole lot of sense: if not-in-it-enough Samuel L Jackson has been convinced Diesel's extreme sports maniac is still alive (despite being killed off and replaced by the slightly cheaper Ice Cube in The Next Level), how come it takes new boss Toni Collette absolutely no time to track him down? How does Diesel expect to go undercover on a tropical island full of rogue agents when he's got the XXX agency logo tattooed on the back of his neck? And how can the studio expect to make a stand against video piracy when Xander's first big action scene is a dizzying hillside descent so he can patch his slum town into the premium sports channels?

Still, despite the stupidity, of which it's not just fully aware but out-and-out proud, XXX: Return Of Xander Cage is perfectly adequate blockbuster action fare, and while it may not have the gripping suspense of the best of the Mission Impossible movies or the A-list class of the best of James Bond, it'll more than suffice in the (temporary?) absence of those franchises. Frankly I'm more excited about another Fast And Furious instalment, but while we're waiting, this will more than fill the gap.

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