{"id":2641,"date":"2017-01-24T12:56:05","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T19:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2641"},"modified":"2018-02-12T16:21:44","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T23:21:44","slug":"xxx-the-return-of-xander-cage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2017\/01\/24\/xxx-the-return-of-xander-cage\/","title":{"rendered":"xXx: The Return of Xander Cage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"xXx\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: D.J. Caruso
\nStarring: Vin Diesel, Toni Collette, Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Kris Wu, Rory McCann, Samuel L. Jackson
\nRated: PG-13 for extended sequences of gunplay and violent action, and for sexual material and language<\/p>\n

As we saw Samuel L. Jackson say in the trailer for \u201cxXx: The Return of Xander Cage,\u201d the entire point of this film is for our heroes to \u201cKick some butt, get the girl, and try to look dope while you do it.\u201d The women don\u2019t need saving (and do a lot of dope-looking butt-kicking themselves), but otherwise? It nails it. This is not a film about character, serious ideas, or story. This is a big, dumb action movie. It\u2019s a solid entry in the class to which it aspires, so if that\u2019s what you like, you\u2019re probably going to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) faked his death, but NSA goon Marsh (Toni Collette) manages to track him down. She wants him to track down the people who stole a mysterious hacker device from the NSA. Anything else about the film\u2019s story is pretty much irrelevant. There\u2019s an object everybody is chasing, and because the film has mild aspirations of political intrigue, it\u2019s not always clear who\u2019s on whose side. Xander picks a team to help him track down the plot device, they fight the other team who has it, etc. <\/p>\n

None of the actors are really bothering to act, which is generally fine. They all have at least a wisp of personality, even if that wisp is just \u201ccool Asian guy with bleached faux-hawk who does acrobatic fighting stuff,\u201d and really, that\u2019s all we need. It\u2019s pretty cool that the cast is so diverse: of the nine main characters, we have four women and five people of color. Add in some goofy one-liners, and we are good to go.<\/p>\n

There are a ton of fancy stunt shots, of varying levels of ridiculousness. Unfortunately, some of the special effects are 80s action movie quality, which is disappointing (green screen has come a long way, but you can\u2019t tell from the dirt-bike-surfing chase sequence here). If you can forgive that, though, there\u2019s plenty here to love. We get to watch Xander ski down a tropical forest mountain with no snow on it, our protagonist jumps out of a plane with no chute (and is able to chase down falling debris that does), and there are all kinds of other lunacy.<\/p>\n

The hand-to-hand fights are glorious \u2013 Donnie Yen is clearly well-trained and talented, Diesel is an old hand at action flicks at this point, and the rest of the central cast of characters have solid moves as well. There\u2019s a good bit of up-close hand-held camera work, but it\u2019s mixed in with longer shots in most sequences, so fans of both types of cinematography can enjoy things. <\/p>\n

If you like action-movie spectacle and don\u2019t mind the lack of plot, character development, acting, or sense, \u201cxXx: The Return of Xander Cage\u201d is a must-see. Otherwise, not so much. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Directed by: D.J. Caruso Starring: Vin Diesel, Toni Collette, Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Kris Wu, Rory McCann, Samuel L. Jackson Rated: PG-13 for extended sequences of gunplay and violent action, and for sexual material and language As we saw Samuel L. Jackson say in the trailer for \u201cxXx: The Return of Xander Cage,\u201d the entire point of this film is for our heroes to \u201cKick some butt, get the girl, and try to look dope while you do it.\u201d The women don\u2019t need saving (and do a lot of dope-looking butt-kicking themselves), but otherwise? It nails it. This is not a film about character, serious ideas, or story. This is a big, dumb action movie. It\u2019s a solid entry in the class to which it aspires, so if that\u2019s what you like, you\u2019re probably going to enjoy it. Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) faked his death, but NSA goon Marsh (Toni Collette)<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[41,20,57],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-actionfestorama-2","tag-mediocrity-at-its-finest","tag-rated-pg-13"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/xXx.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-GB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2643,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions\/2643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}