Although he’s spent the last few years working in series television, director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses, Baywatch) returns to films (albeit one on Netflix) with Back in Action, co-written with Brendan O’Brien (the Neighbors films). The film also marks a reunion of sorts between Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, both of whom co-starred in Any Given Sunday and 2014’s Annie (which was actually Diaz’s last on-screen appearance).
The film concerns a couple of former CIA spies who find themselves in circumstances in which they can fake their own deaths and lead quiet, off-the-grid lives, get married, and raise their kids in relative peace. While on a mission, Emily (Diaz) finds out she’s pregnant, and Matt (Foxx) not only decides that they need to leave the agency but that he should steal and hide an electronic key that unlocks pretty much any safety protocols on any computer-run system in the world. The key was theirs to acquire for the CIA, but Matt sees it as collateral in case anyone comes calling—which makes no sense, since it also makes them an eternal target.
The film jumps ahead 15 years, when we find the couple living happy suburban lives with Emily missing the excitement of spy life. Their kids, Alice (McKenna Roberts) and younger Leo (Rylan Jackson), have no idea what their parents used to do, but they get a sense that something isn’t what it seems after a video of their parents violently extracting 14-year-old Alice from a nightclub goes viral. They are quickly approached by their ex-handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler), who also thought they were dead and believes they still have the key. They also seem to be the target of a British agent named Baron (an utterly underutilized Andrew Scott), who used to have a major crush on Emily and doesn’t believe Matt deserves her to this day. The family gets out of America in a hurry and head to England, where it just so happens Emily’s estranged mother, Ginny (Glenn Close), lives and on whose property Matt actually did hide the key, hoping to one day use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Needless to say, the kids are stunned that their perpetually uncool parents are, in fact, quite cool with hand-to-hand combat, weapons, and tech. Even Ginny is an old-school spy, who keeps a much younger lover in her palatial home whom she also trains to be a spy, even though he’s not especially good at it. Meanwhile young Leo is taking to some of the spy training like an old pro; it’s a tired gag that we know is going to pay off later in the film. Back in Action is essentially just an empty-headed chase film, with the occasional fight scene, gunfire exchange, or tired exposition that spells out the true villain’s plan long after we’ve figured it out.
Back to Action is a tired bundle of spy movie cliches and dialogue exchanges that aren’t funny, nor do they give us any sense of chemistry between this couple who has been together for so many years. The kid actors aren’t exactly setting the world on fire either, but I more blame the standard-issue, sassy-youngster dialogue in the screenplay for that. The action scenes aren’t anything special or exhilarating, and some of the actors (particularly Chandler and Scott) look legitimately bored, counting the seconds until their paychecks clear. Despite the success of the recent smart thriller Carry On, Back in Action is exactly the type of action film we’ve come to expect from Netflix lately—bad character development and a shoddy story, interrupted every so often by a splashy, stunt-heavy segments that are sometimes impressive but usually just loud.
Welcome back, Cameron Diaz!
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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