The original “XXX” was one of the more obnoxious blockbusters of the early 2000s. Starring Vin Diesel as an extreme-sports-star-turned-superspy, it attempted to give the spy movie genre “attitude”, but managed to look ludicrously dated pretty much the moment it came out. While, yes, it did have the pleasures of stupid fun action and globe-hopping locations, Diesel himself didn’t come off particularly well – irritatingly arrogant, snide, acting like a massively over-roided teenager.
This belated follow up levers off the success of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, which has benefitted from surrounding Diesel with a multi-ethnic team of similar car-driving hoons, which softens his arrogance considerably. Here, he’s surrounded with similar acceptably-rebellious meatheads (Ruby Rose, Rory McCann and Kris Wu), and initially posed up against a team of similarly multi-ethnic neer-do-wells (led by the ludicrously charismatic Donnie Yen, with Deepika Padukon, Tony Jaa and Michael Bisping has his goon-force). Samuel L. Jackson makes a minor appearance as Diesel’s old recruiter, with Toni Collette being the woman running the agency and Nina Dobrev the tech-geek who's never been a field agent before and who inevitably will end out in the field at some point.
The basic plot is still pretty much your standard spy shenanigans (there’s an object that does evil things, Yen stole it, Diesel has to get it, twists and turns ensue), there’s a dopey reminder that Ice Cube was in a dodgy sequel-by-name-only, and generally this is a thoroughly pleasant way to watch a lot of explosions, shooting and people being kicked and thumped.This does what a good franchise film does - it entertains and it makes me want to come back and hang out with these people again at a later date. It's empty calories but entertaining empty calories.
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