Back in Action, 2025.
Directed by Seth Gordon.
Starring Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, McKenna Roberts, Rylan Jackson, Glenn Close, Kyle Chandler, Andrew Scott, Jamie Demetriou, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Anna Stadler, Tom Brittney, Adam Basil, Erol Ismail, Lee Charles, Alfredo Tavares, Ruth Clarson, Pierre Bergman, Julia Westcott-Hutton, Katrina Durden, Poppy Townsend White, Robert Besta, Bashir Salahuddin, Ben VanderMey, Jude Mack, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, and Tobi Bamtefa.
SYNOPSIS:
Former CIA spies Emily and Matt are pulled back into espionage after their secret identities are exposed.
A trend in movies (particularly among streaming services) has run its course and been beaten into the ground: married spies. Part of the recent wave typically attempts to dress up the dynamic as action-comedy hijinks, with such off-the-grid spies masking their identities from their children. At the same time, a nefarious double agent or terrorist from their past discovers a lead and starts pursuing them, threatening to upend the domestic life they have either adopted exclusively or wear as a disguise. Yes, this description also fits Seth Gordon’s Jamie Foxx-Cameron Diaz starring Back in Action. In this movie, one anticipates poorly edited and hideously CGI-rendered action sequences as a reprieve from the awful and occasionally tasteless comedy.
Allegedly coming from a screenplay by Seh Gordon and Brendan O’Brien, the film feels designed by an algorithm cribbing elements from similar Netflix movies (ones so forgettable I’m at a loss trying to remember what they were called or what they were about beyond laughing at something J.K. Simmons said in one of them, spies, shady government organizations, and MacGuffins that could turn the whole world upside down) and possibly even their competitors (Apple had a doozy of a stinker with the Mark Wahlberg starring The Family Plan) with no personality or even the slightest touch of an artistic voice.
Even the inevitable reveal of Glenn Close playing an estranged quirky grandmother figure now dating and training a spy younger than her by roughly twice her age feels like a fulfillment of some deranged Netflix contract locking her down into some of the most embarrassing roles imaginable lately that will presumably culminate in an appearance on WWE Monday Night Raw where she wins and temporarily holds the 24/7 Championship for a few minutes before R-Truth has imaginary friend Little Jimmy distract her before rolling her up into a pinning predicament. In her defense, she briefly gets to fight, but that is also difficult to enjoy for its lunacy due to the incompetent filmmaking on display.
Jamie Foxx’s Matt and Cameron Diaz’s Emily are forced to reunite with Ginny as the former has secretly hidden with her in her London home a powerful device capable of controlling the technological infrastructure of Eastern Europe. 15 years ago, it was sought after by terrorist Balthazar Gor (Robert Besta) and presumed to have been lost in a snowy mountain airplane wreck (also visually ugly) so catastrophic that it allowed Matt and Emily to fake their deaths and start new lives away from their CIA-adjacent handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler.)
In the present day, while helicopter-parenting their teenage children Alice (Mckenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson) and starting a brawl in a club that the former illegally enters with a fake ID, taking matters into their own hands against sex-pest creeps (much of what is trying to be passed off for humor here never meshes with the otherwise family-friendly tone), that incident goes viral (because these filmmakers also have no understanding of how social media works) which sets a chain reaction of allies and villains coming after the family.
In the film’s defense, it is loaded with action, albeit most of it is forgettable and slathered in digital effects. Some hand-to-hand combat occasionally breaks through as mildly entertaining, such as when Emily starts wielding neon pink glass light tubes as a weapon or a gas station brawl. As for the plot, the kindest thing to say is that it is coherent, even if it is predictably dumb.
Bizarrely, the messaging with this mess often amounts to parents encouraging their children to lie while also traumatizing those teenagers across several of their parents’ lies. There is little fun here; even Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz have almost no chemistry. No one can blame them either since the script is littered with meme-speak in modern slang, as if it’s desperate to appear hip to anyone who stumbles across this on Netflix and makes the mistake of pressing play. Back in Action should be placed at the back of the Netflix catalog so no one is allowed to make that mistake.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
