Movie: XXX: Return of Xander Cage
Direction: D J Caruso
Cast: Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette, Samuel L Jackson
Music: Brian Tyler, Robert Lydecker
Cinematographer: Russell Carpenter
Editor: Jim Page, Vince Filippone
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Rating: ∗∗
What is it about: It’s a spy action thriller, where the character “Xander Cage” called upon once again to retrieve a deadly weapon named “Pandora’s Box”. And the conspiracy surrounding this forms the crux of the story directed by DJ Caruso.
Why it’s disappointing: There was a tremendous hype surrounding this movie since its announcement in Hollywood and Bollywood. And that was due to obvious reasons Vin Diesel and Deepika Padukone. But the film fails just few minutes in to it. There is hardly any subject to ponder on the film, as it doesn’t carry one. Director had full dependency on the action, if at all a little more focus on the screenplay would have made this one a solid commercial entertainer.
Vin Diesel looked totally rigid churning out cheesy one-liner, which doesn’t stick anywhere. It becomes boring after a while. He tried hard to be cool, but it didn’t quite work in his favour.
Deepika Padukone, the hype which was surrounded her was humongous, but what you see in the trailer is all what you get to see in the film as well. That’s all the action she gets, there was no scope for performance. It was a waste of talent just for the sake of Hollywood.
Nina Dobrev, the star from the famous series “Vampire Diaries” was shown as a geeky-techie chick. You in fact wait to see if this character unfolds a secret but the makers had other plans of showing her stupid.
Toni Collette was too uptight with her expressions, her character looked the most fake than anyone else in the film.
And the most important defect of the film was its 3D and IMAX 3D which was definitely not required as it was a disturbance in viewing experience.
What to watch out for: Among the actors and when you also combine them with action and screen presence, I could point out three actors. Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa and Ruby Rose. Donnie and Tony did great on the action front and Ruby had a good screen presence for the character she played.
The cinematography by Russell Carpenter was great, who did a fantastic job in capturing those edgy action scenes. And it was perfectly cut by Jim & Vince, who kept the endurance on short lease.
The action was quite stylized with death defying stunts, but all that hard work goes in vain with a poor scripted story.
Verdict: DJ Caruso couldn’t revive the image of Xander Cage, it was not like that the first film was a great one but it had the requisite elements to be called as a commercial action entertainer. Unfortunately I have to say this, you can give this sequel a miss.
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