"xXx: The Return of Xander Cage" 4K Review

 The plan was to begin the 2025 Oscars Death March with Emilia Perez, but after 100-seconds of corporate logos, we gave up. Then it was going to be Anora, but the missus decided during the corporate logos she didn't want to watch it. So we tried Flow, but after a few minutes she didn't want to watch an animated cat in a flood. Sigh.

So in the hunt for something dumb and noisy, it was time to revisit xXx: The Return of Xander Cage - the 2017 sequel to Vin Diesel's 2002 xXx which was to launch a second franchise for the meaty actor after The Fast and the Furious made him a Big Star. (2004 would bring his third attempted franchise with The Chronicles of Riddick.) He'd skipped the first sequel, 2005's woeful xXx: State of the Union which attempted to swap in rapper/actor Ice Cube as a new agent, because of course he did, but riding high on the massive success of mid-era Furry Fastness movies, it was time to milk the old cash cow.

After a prologue when the founder of the xXx program, Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), is trying to recruit pro soccer player Neymar  (playing himself in a transparent marketing stunt) only to have a satellite crash into the Chinese restaurant they were having breakfast at (wait, what? Chineses joints serve breakfast?), apparently killing them both because who could survive that (spoiler: they survive), we catch up to Diesel's Xander Cage, who is living in the Dominican Republic and using his Xtreme sports skillz to steal cable in the most convoluted way possible.

Meanwhile back in New York City, a supposedly high security CIA site with a convenient skylight window is assaulted by Talon (Tony Jaa, Ong-Bak) who leaps through the window from an adjacent building, killing most of the agents, and escaping with the oh-so-imaginatively-named Pandora's Box, a magical McGuffin totally not ripped off from the Furry Fastness series' God's Eye, which can crash satellites. (Can it steal cable, too?)

Survivor of the attack, CIA agent Marke (Toni Collette), tracks down Cage in a scene completely recycled from the diner recruiting scene from xXx, and recruits him to get back the McGuffin. After a quick trip to London to gather information and have sex with a bunch of hot chicks because of course he does, he learns the gang who stole the box are hiding in the Philippines

 Rejecting the Special Forces squad provided him, Cage puts together a squad of colorful agents played by Ruby Rose (John Wick 2), Rory McCann (Throne Games), and Kris Wu (a Chinese actor/rapper who was convicted of rape and tax evasion in 2022 and is serving a 13-year sentence) to take on Xiang (Donny Yen, Ip Man, John Wick 4) and his gang who turn out to be xXx agents who stole the box to prevent it from being used.

There's a lot more plot, but it's all so silly and pointless to catalog because movies like this are about the goofy action like when Cage chases Xiang on motorcycles with water skis which allow them to not only race over the surface of the water, but submerge under waves and keep running or the scene where they play hot potato with a hand grenade as if the fuse stops burning if you depress the handle again.
The globe-trotting ends up in Detroit (actually Hamilton, Ontario, because Toronto is too nice to double Motown) and they actually make a decent half-assed effort of CGIing the skyline into some shots at times. 

 Diesel smirks through things and the rest of the cast seems to be having fun with the material, not attempting to invest this confection with Deep Meaning. There's a great cameo which ties in the second movie (one guess as to who it is) and when you're done watching it, you will have been generally entertained with a minimal amount of intelligence insult. Put it this way, as goofy as this is, they're not launching a Fiero into orbit or dragging a nuke in a metal ball through the streets of Rome.

 On the AV front, the Dolby Vision presentation is bright and colorful - remember when movies had color in them - with a lot of saturated punch. The Atmos mix has the bass boom, but doesn't really make your height speakers work.

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage is a perfectly serviceable action flick throwback to the early-21st Century though made after such movies became passe. There's nothing wrong with silliness if done well.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.