xXx: Return of Xander Cage

Xander Cage? What, he was gone? Oh, in case you missed it, the first “xXx” movie was with Vin Diesel. But then a second was made, and his character was ‘declared dead’. The extreme athlete in the second was played by Ice Cube. But the ‘Triple X Project’ has lasted into three movies, so that is why Xander Cage is back.

The leader of the ‘Triple X Project’ is NSA Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson). His plan is to continue to recruit extreme athletes into the Project, until a satellite falls from the sky and kills him. CIA bigwig Jane Marke (Toni Collette) is then after Xander Cage to make sure he wasn’t prematurely dead so he could help the government catch the bad guys. Xander will not work with the CIA/military crew and instead he has his own crew.

The bad guy group has a device called ‘Pandora’s Box’. You might think that device would deliver a steady stream of music fit to your unique tastes. But, no, it is merely a complicated McGuffin thing to chase around the globe. Xiang (Donnie Yen) and his crew stole the device, but it was only a prototype McGuffin. Xiang turns out to be a former Triple X recruit, so now he is a good guy. Many different things happen in many different locations, to show that this is movie that has many places that Xander can go.

There are a few other people in the cast, but it would not make a difference if I named them all. The main draw is Vin Diesel and his gruff voice and gigantic ‘guns’. Is there a story slapped in here somewhere? Sort of, but I could not really tell. Where there action sequences? Well, there were quite a quick edits on the screen and a lot of blurry motion. So I guess that could be taken as an action sequence. Was the dialog stiff and clunky? That is a resounding yes.

The people who will go see this movie will like anything that Vin Diesel does. Regardless of how fast or furious he is, or if Vin is full of ‘Groot’, that would not matter in the least. They want lots of fast cars, loud guns and dumb action as its highest level.

Perhaps Shakespeare said it best, being the famous movie critic that he is: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”