XXX: Return of Xander Cage

It wouldn’t have taken much longer for D J Caruso and Scott Frazier to narrate the story of XXX: Return of Xander Cage to Vin Diesel. The plot of the film is that thin. It is basically a less convincing story that has been written in a way to showcase back to back set pieces. Indians would be expecting something whistle worthy as Deepika Padukone is there in the film, but much to our disappointment there isn’t much space for that character in this Xander Cage show.

So the story this time has a device (referred to as Pandora’s box) that has the ability to control all the satellites in the world. One of them has already fallen from the sky and as a group of people has taken it from the National Security folks, they have decided to take help from Xander Cage who is a dead man as per records. Cage’s efforts to find Pandora’s box with the help of his selected team and what happens in that quest is what XXX: Return of Xander Cage basically dealing with.

If you have seen the trailer there is a basic story you would be able to create in your mind and XXX: Return of Xander Cage is pretty much that story. You can easily predict the good, the bad and the cheaters. The film isn’t absorbing in terms of plot points as most of the “sophisticated” stuff they show on screen looks clichéd. The movie is pretty much dependent on the action set pieces. Even though they don’t have much of a prominence in the film, those are the only stuff that keeps it alive. The entire first half (Yeah here in India we have a bad habit of slicing) of the film has too much of unnecessary build up. After numerous irrelevant action episodes in the first half, the film moves in to a second half that again has explosions, gun shots and fist fights, but this time all of it had valid purpose.

Scott Frazier has written the script as if it is that commercial Indian movie which includes certain scenes just to glorify the hero. The structure of XXX: Return of Xander Cage is very easy to guess and director D J Caruso is also only interested in just showcasing action choreography and there isn’t much of a swag coolness that we would expect. The clichés in the developments and the never ending action at times makes the movie a pointless action film. All the fist fights looked genuine. The remaining stunts kind of had the glitches we see in the CGI aided stunts.

Vin Diesel is like the Salman Khan of Hollywood and you don’t expect a wide range of expression from him. Much like all the popular films he has been a part of, Diesel has done his part with his screen presence. Donnie Yen has got the best action scenes in the film. Deepika Padukone as Serena has very little space to perform in this film and I don’t really see a reason other than mere popularity to choose a film like this at the peak of her career when she is doing substantial roles in Bollywood. Similarly people like Tony Jaa and Ruby Rose also got roles that never had much to prove.

Very discretely the film has laughable funny and cool moments. At a time when quality content is available along with terrific action, a hero worshipping creation like XXX: Return of Xander Cage is a boring film. Having Neymar in the beginning and end is not enough to make this movie worthy.

Rating: 2/5