Anyway, I went into The Return of Xander Cage with the high hopes that I would walk out of the theater highly entertained. But after seeing this film, it might be time to reevaluate my new dream goals as I clearly need to come back down to Earth a bit. After the 5 minute long opening credits scene that involved a transforming satellite finally came to an end, I turned to my idiot friend and asked ‘Why does this movie suck already?"
Now Vin has said all along that he only agreed to do this movie because it was pure fun and that there was nothing remotely serious about it. Ok, well I get that, but if you’re going to do something that’s fun and requires zero intellect, why not just date Taylor Swift instead? I mean, she does a ton of coke, she sings and dances like nobody’s business, and I won’t have to pay $12 to watch it on a 50 foot screen when it actually happens! Stop being selfish for one second Vin and think about all of us poor drunks out there!
Don’t get me wrong, in theory there were quite a few funny ideas in this film; it’s just that in practice they didn’t quite work out the way they played out in the writers’ heads. For starters, there’s Vin Diesel nearly getting his head blown off just so he can bring free cable to the local Colombians. Now I actually appreciated this scene because if I’m on a beach somewhere and I can’t get the Dallas Cowboys game, I’m gonna be pissed! So you damn well better jump off of a 100 foot tower while wearing skis in the middle of a hot jungle because We Dem Boys! We Dem Boys!
But from there it just became total ridiculousness. Every time Tony Jaa showed up on screen, he’d dance a little jig and yell his last name (Jaa) before he kicked someone in the face or seamlessly jumped onto a moving motorcycle. Then there was the incredible love scene between Vin and some buxom Colombian that ended with a shot of a dump truck releasing a load of white sand into a small crevice. And no I’m not making that up! But oh it gets worse! I haven’t even mentioned his weak posse that included a "hot" lesbian who said lame things like "that’s what she said" whenever someone mentioned the fact that she knew was doing something good or the one idiot whose specialty was crashing cars. Crashing cars??? Is that really how you want to pay tribute to Paul Walker? Ok, yes it’s still a bit too soon.
But I saved the best posse member for last, and that’s the scrawny Asian dude whose specialty was having fun. I really wish I was making this up. His role literally came down to walking into a crowded room, finding some turntables (because what respectable place doesn’t have turntables just chilling in the corner), and turning the party out while Vin and his pals went to work. Now as I’m typing this, I’m having the same reaction that I had when I initially walked out of this disaster and that’s that I couldn’t stop laughing for 36 hours! My idiot friend and I couldn’t figure out how this film could have all of these fresh individual parts but collectively still sucked! In the moment, the only truly cool parts that where in this film where whenever Hermione Corfield appeared on screen, when Vin had an orgy to negotiate a meeting, and when Ice Cube showed up to wreck shop with his grenade launcher! Outside of that, it was pretty painful.
The only reason why this film doesn’t get a rating of wack is because I still can’t stop laughing about utterly ridiculous it was; so based off of that, I’ll give it a rating of really, really WEAK!
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