"xXx: Return of Xander Cage" Movie Review

Physics be damned. Vin Diesel proves that natural science has no hold over Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), an NSA agent who was previously thought to be dead but is found and brought back out of hiding in order to save the world from falling satellites. Someone within the NSA stole a device known as Pandora's Box that controls every satellite orbiting Earth and uses it to cause them to fall one by one to Earth. The government is obviously freaking out about it. Xiang, played by Donnie Yen, and his gorgeous partner Serena, played by Deepika Padukone, are out to stop it from falling in government hands. Xander is caught between the NSA and the blacklisted agents and must choose who he trusts if he's going to obtain Pandora's Box before all the satellites are destroyed.

The plot wasn't bad. It was actually very entertaining. One thing I loved about the film was that governmental wasteful spending was poked fun at numerous times. Jane, played by Toni Collette, was the agent that recruited Xander. At one point, Xander scoffs at the technology and says to Jane, "No wonder America's in debt trillions of dollars. Do you really need all the gadgets to catch this guy?" Jane replies by saying, "Oh, we don't need them. But it makes the catching more fun." I wonder just how true that statement is.

The acting was much better than the previous films, however, there's still room for improvement. Donnie Yen was by far my favorite out of all of them. His martial arts were astounding. I'd love to see him face off with Jackie Chan sometime. The next best was Ruby Rose, who played super sniper Adele Wolff. She loved, lived, and breathed weaponry. Ruby was insanely badass and I can't wait to see her in her next two action films this year (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and John Wick: Chapter 2). Last, but certainly not least, there's the bubbly and funny Nina Dobrev who took a complete 180 degree turn from her more serious role in The Vampire Diaries. She was an absolute delight and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

Overall, I was more than impressed with the film. It wasn't perfect but at least it had a coherent plot unlike the other two. The action was impressive. There were some stunts that I had never seen before. There were times when you couldn't tell what was CGI and what was real which just added to the intensity and fun. The film gets a 3.5 out of 4.