In “back in action,” a domestic spy prank that’s as generic as its title, jamie fox And cameron diazAs CIA operatives, a romantic couple attend a children’s birthday party hosted by a Belarusian cyberterrorist, whose safe they plan to break into. But in about five minutes his identity is revealed. They have to fight their way out of the criminal’s mansion, which they do in an extended sequence of bone-breaking face-off, in which Frank Sinatra sings “Love” (“l…is for your way Look…on me…”) The song, as used here, is based on a sarcastic joke with a trowel. It’s the film’s way of saying: There’s nothing at stake, don’t take it seriously, Turn off your brain and soak in the warm bath of this Netflix product-of-the-week (because it’s all right here).
“Back in Action” director Seth Gordon thinks in terms of cartoon-reality. He thinks it’s his job, and setting ultraviolent action scenes to the old standards is the only playbook for “back in action.” Our heroes are on an MI6 plane when they are ambushed by flight attendants, who they proceed to destroy while Sinatra sings, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” (haha). The pilot gets shot, the plane is going down, but Frank is jumping away. Later, Fox and Diaz use a gas-station hose as a flamethrower to incinerate some thug attackers; Etta James singing “At Last” with pictures of people being burned alive Love Along comes…”) They win the fight, but make no mistake: This is the entertainment strategy of a misanthropic hack.
After that plane crash, Matt (Fox) and Emily (Diaz), who is pregnant, take the opportunity to fake her death and resume a normal life. The film then cuts to the present day, where they are suburban parents with two children, 14-year-old Alice (McKenna Roberts) and 12-year-old Leo (Rylan Jackson). But they get into a fight again after taking Alice to a nightclub, where she was with some older men. They beat up some other fellows and escort him out of the club – a highly improbable scenario, though necessary so that a cell-phone video of it could go viral and they could be outed as former spies.
With their kids in tow for the trip, the family flies to London, where Matt has hidden the film’s super-dull MacGuffin, the ICS key. If they retrieve it and return it to the CIA, they can use it to gain immunity. But the main thing is what everyone wants, including his old terrorist enemies…
Watching “Back in Action” feels as if a producer took the original, exaggerated, gunshot-and-highway-crash 2005 film version of “Mr. And Mrs. Smith,” which ruined Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and said, “Get me something like that — except don’t make it so highbrow! I want it to be low-key, heavy-handed, with no cheesy dialogue.” There isn’t much of a spy plot in “Back in Action.” Basically, the movie has Fox and Diaz beating the crap out of people — and, in between, behaving as casually, obliviously and casually as if they were playing parents in a reboot of “Family Ties.” Have been.
Both actors are charming; They have marriage-like-domestic-fight-club chemistry. And when Glenn Close shows up as Emily’s British mother, herself a former super spy, the movie calms down a bit – and perks up. Close’s Ginny has an assistant, Nigel (Jamie Demetriou), who is a spy in training and also her boyfriend, even though he is at least 40 years her junior. And Nigel, it turns out, doesn’t know what he’s doing. This leads to a fun sequence where he has to save London by tapping the right things into the laptop, and he reacts exactly the way most of us would, infuriating digital-logistics hoops-to-jump-through. Do when facing D-. Week. But the real reason for Nigel’s uncertainty is that everyone “back in action” (heroes, villains, kids) is so egotistical at every moment that the film leaves no room for any comic-thriller component beyond boring one-dimensionality. Is. Badass certainty.
