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Written by: Rich Wilkes
Directed by: Rob Cohen
Starring: Vin Diesel, Asia Argento, Marton Csokas, Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Trejo, Eve
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
An extreme sports athlete, Xander Cage, is recruited by the government on a special mission.
Verdict
When you're an extreme athlete, everything is a ramp. Everything blows up. Cage is just too cool. We must broadly suspend our disbelief with this movie. He can do everything well so there's never any stakes. The concept of this movie is to combine extreme sports and spy craft. This is mindless action, but that shouldn't be a surprise. There's very little substance to this movie.
Skip it.
Review
After the success of The Fast and the Furious, director Cohen and star Vin Diesel's next effort was this.
A government program recruits cons and expendables for missions. Their skills add value, and no one will miss them if they're gone. The sweet spot is criminals that are also extreme athletes. Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) makes their list by stealing and crashing a Senator's car just to create a social media video. It's quite the stunt, and I'm not sure how he isn't arrested for that. The cops know exactly who he is, and even if you get away it's still a crime.
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| Vin Diesel plays Xander Cage |
Kidnapped by the government for their program, Cage passes the first round of tests because he picks up clues like he's the smartest person in the world. He also speaks in one liners. The movie tries hard, but there isn't much else for Diesel to do. This movie doesn't want to build character, it's here for stunts.
This movie really leans into the extreme sports. The second trial is a test that's actually real, but of course Cage aces this test because there's a dirt bike nearby. The government agrees to erase his crimes if he helps them. Cage plays by his own rules, is given a bunch of cool toys, and then blows stuff up. This is exactly what you should expect with this movie. It's mindless action. Cage is too cool and too good at everything. This doesn't have any stakes because there is no danger of him failing. Each scene is just a prop for extreme sports action. Cage is always right, always cool.
A boring, generic villain wants to cause chaos because the movie needs something that resembles a plot. Cage must save the world because the plot needs it. To develop the story, this could take the typical sports movie arc where a young talent fails and then must work harder to succeed. That also serves as the basis for the audience to become vested in the character. We want to see them succeed. None of that happens in this movie. Cage does stunts and doles out one liners until the end of the movie. You never for a second think he might fail because the movie has established him as incapable of failure.
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