xxx: The Return of Xander Cage**

XXX emerged over a decade ago originally as a rival to the James Bond franchise. A tough no nonsense, muscle ripped, dare devil who works for Government to save world and get the girl just in time to rival Bond's 2002 latest film Die Another Day with Pierce Brosnan. However despite XXX making a good profit Bond won the box office battle and ironically also saw both lead actors leave their own franchises which were both rebooted shortly after. Bond with Daniel Craig and XXX with Ice Cube but his Sequel in 2005 (ironically directed by Bond's Die Another Day director Lee Tamarhori) under performed at the box office leaving the franchise in the abyss. 

Time however is a funny thing and the undoubted cash cow that has become the Fast and The Furious Franchise has to be the key factor behind the resurrection of this franchise that nobody was really chanting for.  XXX: The Return of Xander Cage or XXX: The Return Of The Actor From The Highly Lucrative Fast and Furious Franchise Please Watch This Film!

The story sees a national security threat where bad guys can use a device to crash satellites out of the sky.... think maybe they were scraping barrel with that one and only Vin Diesel's daredevil Xander Cage can save the world!

But wait his character was apparently killed in action over decade ago? Well it turns out his actually still alive, faked his death and been on the run ever since. Living a quiet life keeping a low profile by jumping off massive telephone aerials, flying through the jungle on a pair of skies, skateboarding into on coming traffic, risking his freedom and life just help locals get a better TV signal as you do. With this type of low key behaviour it's no wonder he is tracked down by the government agency that's behind the rogue XXX program which recruits daredevil renegades to save the day. 

Xander Cage agrees to come back out of retirement and work with them to find the device that allows satellites to drop out of the sky!

Well one thing most be obvious this film is not in it for the acting nor the screenplay accolades. This is meant to be balls out fun which doesn't take it self seriously and thank God for that because it is for all intensive preposes this is ridiculous and even jumps the shark when Vin engages in using his motorbike to surf waves. This makes Die Another Day much ridiculed wind surfing scene seem sensible and realistic.
This is the theme of the film just doing whatever it likes as even a tender love scene at the start with Vin is half an hour later replaced with a random mass orgy.

The redeeming feature here is when the action is more grounded it can be spectacular. There's chase scene on foot taking place on a highway with cars crashing all all round our hero which is genuinely exciting with crashes getting bigger, closer and louder in a environment that hasn't abandoned all sense of basic plausibility. This is of course until all the actors are getting run over by cars and don't even emerge with a bruise. Hell I had a car crash ten years ago and my neck still hurts. 

There's some great action straight out of a Call Of Duty Game where there's a zero gravity shoot out on board a crashing government plane. It's like a five minute version of that five second cool moment from the end of Liam Neeson's Non Stop.  

At the end of the day this is the Vin Vehicle and gives you exactly that. Hell if you can accept Vin skiing through the jungle in the opening ten minutes this is the film for you. The film wears it's crazy larger than life theme on it's sleeve with honour and 12 year old kids are going to love this film it's the adults and parents who going to be rubbing there heads.

By Chris Hembury