Editor’s Note: xXx: Return of Xander Cage is currently playing in wide theatrical release.
Let’s try this one more, hopefully last, time. Raise your hand if you wanted to see Fast & Furious star Vin Diesel reprise his role as the most extreme of extreme James Bond clones, Xander Cage, a.k.a., xXx? Now put your hand down if you happen to be Vin Diesel, his agent, manager, or anyone associated with his production company. Also put your hand down if you happened to be named D.J. Caruso (The Disappointments Room, I Am Number Four, Eagle Eye, Disturbia, Taking Lives) or happen to be related to him, even tangentially. That doesn’t leave much numbers-wise for xXx: Return of Xander Cage’s box-office hopes, but if we’ve learned anything, anything at all from Vin Diesel’s career in or out of the Fast & Furious series, it’s Diesel’s never-say-no mentality. Nothing, not even a minuscule fan base outside of Fast & Furious has stopped Diesel from pushing for standalone series or franchises, first with Pitch Black and its two sequels and now with the Xander Cage character.
Cage’s cooler-than-thou persona, unflappably calm demeanor in the face of (cartoon) danger, and ability to turn the most beautiful women, usually supermodels turned actresses, into one-and-done bed mates, borrowed heavily from Bond’s cinematic incarnation, but like Bond, it was (and remains) fantasy wish-fulfillment for 15-year-old boys.
Curiously, xXx: Return of Xander Cage saves the title character’s reintroduction for the third scene after welcoming back Cage’s mentor/handler, Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) in the first and a physics-defying heist at the CIA’s lightly guarded New York City HQ in the second. The object everyone wants, a black box prototype that can take control of any satellite orbiting the Earth and turn into the equivalent of a ballistic missile, never rises above sub-Bondian levels, but that’s to be expected from a series originally reimagined as an edgy, semi-subversive take on Bond’s supposedly tired tropes. The first xXx gave us rehashed, superficially tweaked tropes glossed over with Diesel’s outsider persona, droll line deliveries, and the equivalent of non-traditional, extreme sports in action-movie form. Cage’s cooler-than-thou persona, unflappably calm demeanor in the face of (cartoon) danger, and ability to turn the most beautiful women, usually supermodels turned actresses, into one-and-done bed mates, borrowed heavily from Bond’s cinematic incarnation, but like Bond, it was (and remains) fantasy wish-fulfillment for 15-year-old boys.
Bond’s sexism and casual misogyny carried over into xXx (2002), but it’s even more pronounced in the sequel where Cage’s mere presence sends scantily clad women into orgy mode (there’s one orgy, but it’s offscreen). Women wear little, often emerging from pools in bikinis (the better for Caruso’s leering camera to ogle them) or lean suggestively on corners or walls, waiting for Cage to notice them. The obligatory nerd-girl/tech wiz, Becky Clearidge (Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries), may dress demurely, but can’t keep her eyes and hand off of Cage, dropping high-school level double-meanings into her conversations with Cage. In the real world, her behavior would be tantamount to sexual harassment not fodder for cringe-inducing “comedic” amusement, but in xXx: Return of Xander Cage, it’s barely worth a thinly worded reprimand from her boss, but only because she’s wasting valuable time when she should be dropping exposition the black box, the team who stole the black box led by Xiang (Donnie Yen), and where to find them, a South Seas vacation spot for international criminals.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage may not deliver on the story, character, or dialogue levels (or performances for that matter), but at least it throws up a not-inconsequential number of well choreographed set pieces.
Cage gets the obligatory romantic interest in the form of Serena Unger (Deepika Padukone), Xiang’s second-in-command, but Padukone’s background as a supermodel first and an actress a distant second betrays her every time she has to exchange meaningful conversations with Cage or anyone on her team for that matter. She’ll be a distant memory by the time Diesel reprises the Xander role again in another decade or two. But Padukone wasn’t hired for her acting skills, just her ability to fill out a tightly fitting dress and look reasonably convincing with a firearm or drop-kicking one of the film’s seemingly endless series of disposable henchmen. Those henchmen serve an important purpose, of course: Without them, Cage and his support team couldn’t flex their action-hero skills and save the world from a threat that goes deep inside the U.S. government (among other places).
xXx: Return of Xander Cage may not deliver on the story, character, or dialogue levels (or performances for that matter), but at least it throws up a not-inconsequential number of well choreographed set pieces, most involving either Cage (by the evidence onscreen, Diesel’s stunt double received significant overtime) or Yen (not his stunt double). Cage gets all of the big, ground- and air-based action sequences (skiing in a rainforest, motorcycle chases through the jungle, jumps out of soon-to-crash airplanes minus a parachute), but Yen’s Xiang’s gets the majority of the hand-to-hand combat scenes (sadly cut to shreds by Caruso and his hyperactive editor). Yen’s martial arts skill set puts him among the world’s best, as does his professionalism (he could have phoned in his performance).
The latest installment of the xXx series can't deliver on performances, dialogue or story, and proves it is little more than wish-fulfillment for 15-year-old boys.
