Back in Action Review: Not Worth the Return

Seth Gordon’s Back in Action is a perfectly acceptable action-comedy that doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before.

The thing is, apart from allowing Cameron Diaz (who announced her retirement shortly after appearing in the Annie remake) to come back to blockbuster filmmaking, the film doesn’t do anything particularly exciting or original. This results in a movie that can be watched while using TikTok or doing the laundry; not exactly riveting stuff.

Back in Action starts with a prologue that takes us back to a few years before the main events of the movie, in which we see super spies Matt (Jamie Foxx) and Emily (Cameron Diaz) surviving a plane crash in the mountains after failing to retrieve a MacGuffin called The Key for the CIA. Since most people now think they’re dead, and Emily has revealed to Matt that she’s pregnant, they decide to retire and start a family, turning into “normal people” and leaving their world of violence and explosions and terrorists behind.

Years later, Matt and Emily are living a happy life in the suburbs, although they do have a couple of problems with their kids. Teenager Alice (McKenna Roberts) is rebelling, and young Leo (Rylan Jackson) spends most of his time playing on his Nintendo Switch. Things get even more difficult, though, when the couple get discovered by their old enemies, who think they still have the Key. Knowing they can’t put their kids in danger, the two spies decide to travel to England to meet Emily’s mother, Ginny (Glenn Close), who might be able to help them. But apart from being chased by terrorists, they’re also being followed by MI6, led by Emily’s ex, Baron (Andrew Scott).

Back in Action has clearly been designed to be as familiar and comforting as possible. Meaning, the movie is full of clichés we’ve seen countless times before. We’ve got the teen daughter who hates his mum, the kid addicted to video games, a couple of spies who have to get back into the game, a dangerous MacGuffin that’s being sought by terrorists, and more. This would be fine if Seth Gordon and Brendan O’Brien’s script did anything interesting with these elements, but that’s not the case. Back in Action is an incredibly predictable movie, and even when it tries to be surprising, it fails.

Which is a pity, because there are things to like here. There’s some chemistry between the leads, for example, which results in a couple of legitimately hilarious moments. The fact that Baron apparently still has feelings for Emily adds an unexpected wrinkle to the plot, although the movie doesn’t do much with it. And even though the action scenes –fisticuffs, car chases, the works– are generic and don’t generate much excitement, at least they’re well choreographed and shot clearly. That’s where we’re at, folks: thanking that a big-budget movie features decent, easy-to-follow fights.

Moreover, it’s fun to see charismatic Cameron Diaz in a new movie, even if it’s tedious stuff such as this. She genuinely seems to be having fun, the same as Jamie Foxx, who plays… Well, Jamie Foxx. In addition, Back in Action features a rather interesting supporting cast, some of them having as much fun as the leads, others… not so much. Glenn Close plays Ginny as a British caricature, but a fun one at that; Kyle Chandler is suitably believable in a role that goes through a couple of significant changes, and both kids are charming enough. On the other end of the spectrum, Andrew Scott seems to be bored to tears playing Baron, the “straight man” in this entire affair. He looks like he wants to be somewhere else, probably back on the set of All Of Us Strangers.

Back in Action isn’t horrible; it looks good, it features its leading actors actually getting involved in many of its action scenes, and it’s quite funny at times (usually thanks to Jamie Foxx). But at the same time, it could be confused with any other action-comedy or action-thriller that Netflix has produced in the last ten years or so. Back in Action is too simplistic, too generic, and too predictable to be memorable, and the fact that it ends with sequel bait feels unearned and naively optimistic. I had enough fun with the film, I suppose, but I’m sure I will have forgotten most of it by the end of the week.

Back In Action is now available to stream globally on Netflix.