Film Review | xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

The third in the franchise, and 12 years after the last, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is as much about the return of Vin Diesel to this extreme action series as it is about populating the screen with a United Nations of actors. Representing every major demographic, and kicking butt alongside Cage, are Deepika Padukone (India) as Serena, Donnie Yen (Hong Kong) as Xiang, Ruby Rose (Australia) as sniper expert Adele Wolff, Tony Jaa (Thailand) as Talon, Khris Wu (China/Canada) as Harvard “Nicks" Zhou, Rory McCann (Scotland) as Tennyson and Nina Dobrev (Canada) as techie Becky Clearidge. Samuel L Jackson (USA) also makes a fleeting appearance as agent Augustus Gibbons, founder of the xXx programme.

In the opening scene, Gibbons is interviewing a potential new recruit. Champion footballer Neymar plays himself, and with that Brazil gets covered. Believed to be dead, Xander Cage is in fact hiding out in Latin America. But the head of the NSA (played by Australian actor Toni Collette) manages to track down the extreme sports athlete-turned special agent and bring him back to track down a criminal who has a dangerous weapon called Pandora’s Box. She says she needs “someone who can walk into a tornado and come out of it like it was a gentle breeze", and that someone is Xander Cage.

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Cage regroups the xXx men and women (“the good, the bad and the extreme") to recover this weapon. Director DJ Caruso slickly executes the action scenes and takes us around the world, from the Dominican Republic to London to the Phillipines and back to North America.

The mandate of the franchise is summarised succinctly in this exchange:

Augustus Gibbons: “Let me simplify it for you. Kick some ass, get the girl, and try to look dope while you do it."

Xander Cage: “I could definitely make that work."

The plot is as flimsy as the garments on the beauties. Eventually there’s room for only one alpha male in this story and that’s Xander, who grins like a Cheshire cat while saving the planet. Padukone gets a meaty role and plays the bad girl with style. She and Ruby Rose stand out in a lineup of otherwise silly performances and sketchy characters.