xXx: Return of Xander Cage

Ever want to see what $1.5 Billion dollars buys you? Look no further than xXx: Return of Xander Cage. Return of who? You may well ask. This film is the second sequel (yes really) to the successful, if not exactly lauded action/spy film from 15 years ago. So why now, a decade and a half later, are we getting a sequel to a film people didn't remember heralding the return of a character people didn't care about? Who is this film for? Well the answer starts with one person. Mr Vin Diesel.

Whilst people were hardly expecting the last Fast and Furious film to flop, even its most ardent fans, myself included among them, were likely a little surprised when its box office gross veered headlong in to the billion dollar stratosphere. With that financial clout and the support of over 100 million facebook followers, It can't come as too much of a surprise that a film studio was willing to finance him to relive his glory days onscreen. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow him to present The Great Vin Diesel Vanity Project.

Directed by DJ Caruso, the little plot there is revolves around our eponymous hero being coerced out of self imposed retirement after an anonymous villain uses a mysterious device to, and stick with me here, pull discarded satellites out of orbit and crash them in to earth, with one hitting a little too close to home. This amounts to scenes of a 49 year old man (look it up, its true) escaping armed guards on a skateboard, I repeat, a skateboard, to bring a digital tv box to impoverished villagers to they can watch the football. The children praise him! The ladies love him him! The audience remembers he actually produced the film himself. You get the sense that he believed he was making James Bond for a modern generation. It actually reminded me more of this:

Booourns indeed.

That reference may seem dated but that fits with the overall feel. If they were aiming to make a film that was 'down with the kids' I guess he succeeded in a way. A scene which features a mass of scantily clad women apparently unable to keep their hands off him feels akin to a teenage boy bragging about all the girls he totally made out with. Jay from the Inbetweeners would likely reject it as too self-aggrandizing.

As for the climactic action sequence, well that has all the dramatic gravitas of a bunch a 5 year olds in a playground making machine guns noises and explosion sounds with their mouths. If that sounds like a criticism, well that's because it is, but with one minor caveat. I have been told that watching kids play is moderately more endearing if they are your kids, and sure enough this films aims squarely for global box office domination by stocking its supporting cast to an almost cynical degree with an action star to appeal to any affection. From Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone and Thai marshal arts star Tony Jaa all the way to small screen standouts such as Orange is The New Black's Ruby Rose and Game of Thrones Rory McCann aka The Hound, all tastes are catered for.

I can't deny that I got a certain thrill from watching England's own UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping just about hold his own on screen, albeit in a role that wasn't exactly a stretch. The stand out though has to be Hong Kongs Donnie Yen, fresh from a rightly attention grabbing turn in Rogue One. His presence and charisma only served to show that he is the kind of star studios should be building franchises around and let Vin get back to playing with his cars.

Now I know there is an argument that films like this are almost beyond criticism because they are designed to be brainless fun but I disagree. They can be fun without being bad. I adore action cinema and there is plenty to love out there. From John Wick to the Fast and the Furious franchise itself, there are a wealth of films that shown repeatedly over recent years that you can be both genuinely entertaining and hugely entertaining without them have to coast on a wave of derision. Those films delivered set pieces that felt fresh and inventive, where as this feels like it conceived by a focus group of parents who were asked what their kids were in to.

There is no denying that in an age where the traditional action star has long since been on the decline, there is still some fair currency in the Vin Diesel brand but this project does him no favours. You are never going to appeal to the widest audience if you are your own biggest fan and in the case of this film, he may well be the only one.