Movie Review: xXx: Return of Xander Cage
xXx: Return of Xander Cage is the third movie of the xXx franchise released after a long pause since the second one titled as xXx: State of the Union (2005).
The movie stars Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette and Samuel L Jackson. It has been one of the much awaited movies of this year for the Diesel fans and also because of the appearance of Deepika Padukone in a Hollywood movie for the first time.
Well, now, let me get down to business straight away. Instead of the first few minutes where you get a surprising, very refreshing and totally unexpected cameo from an unlikely superstar (not giving away the name to avoid spoiler), the movie is mostly a waste of your valuable time.
So, all of you Diesel fans, who were waiting for this and expecting to have some quality movie time, you are most likely to get disappointed. And those who plan to go to the theatres expecting some really great, thrilling and unique action are bound to be disappointed.
The action, although a desperate attempt to introduce some new tricks, like skateboarding on hilly forest and surfing the waves on a motorbike, mostly falls flat. And rest of the action is fully old school.
The humour seems to flow smooth due to the casual and naturally bold acting from Vin Diesel. However, it fails to amuse most of the time for lack of uniqueness. Apart from one or two dialogues most of it are lame and cheesy, mostly falls far below average.
As far as acting goes, Deepika has really let us down with perhaps her worst show ever! Her flat and dry throwing at times seems to have affected Vin’s performance too at some scenes. Pay attention just before halftime, when she apparently shoots the Pandora’s Box.
The plot is not well-developed and mostly predictable. It's all too discernible that there will be some sort of a trouble which can only be fixed by Xander and his team. Then the CIA will have to bring him in despite his playful resistance, and eventually, he will set everything right after some straight-forward course of mundane action-packed scenes passing in a very quick succession.
Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), thought to be long dead, comes out of self-imposed exile as recruited by the CIA to find and defeat villains and to recover a powerful weapon known as "Pandora's Box". Recruiting a group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander gradually gets caught up in a deadly conspiracy of corruption among insiders in his own country's government.
Even the much awaited on-screen chemistry of Diesel and Deepika fails to have any impact. The only thing that gives you the patience to stay on your seats is the quite beautifully composed high pitch background score of the film that almost succeeded to make the lame action bearable.
So, my observation is- opt for it only if you are a die-hard Diesel or Deepika fan; or you just like mindless action and want to enjoy multiple Rajinikanths in one movie.
My rating for it: 4 out of 10.