Back in Action
Cameron Diaz and her character are both back in action for "Back in Action."
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“Back in Action” (now streaming on Netflix) is the second spy movie I’ve reviewed this week after “Alarum” (review here) wherein our protagonists leave the world of espionage behind for a life of domesticity. This one has a big leg up on its competition as it marks Cameron Diaz’s first film in over 10 years.
Matt (Jamie Foxx, whom I briefly met this time last year while hiking Diamond Head in O’ahu – he was going up, I was going down … seemed like a nice fella) and Emily (Diaz) are a spy duo on a mission on behalf of their handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler) when she discovers she’s pregnant with her partner’s baby.
They promptly leave cloak-and-dagger for cloth diapers and subsequently move to suburbia. We flashforward 15 years and are introduced to Matt and Emily’s daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts) and their son Leo (Rylan Jackson). Matt’s coaching Alice’s soccer team. Emily longs for the Movie Mondays of yore with their daughter. Leo’s generally just playing video games and minding his own damned business. Fairly standard family stuff … until their cover’s blown.
Emily’s MI6 agent pseudo-ex Baron (Andrew Scott) incorrectly thinks they did some dirt before departing and is in pursuit of them. The family flees to London where they look to reconnect with and get assistance from Emily’s estranged mother Ginny (Glenn Close), a retired MI6 legend.
“Back in Action” is scripted by Seth Gordon and Brendan O’Brien (he’s one of the writers of the “Neighbors” movies) and directed by Gordon. Gordon cut his teeth with the awesome video game doc “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” before doing a bunch of successful studio comedies including “Four Christmases,” “Horrible Bosses” (in which Foxx co-starred as the awesomely-monikered Motherfucker Jones) and “Identity Thief.” He stumbled commercially and critically in the action-comedy arena with a TV-to-film adaptation of “Baywatch.” Gordon’s latest foray into the subgenre is a slight improvement on that Hasselhoff-inspired hokum. It’s entertaining-enough, entirely forgettable and innocuously inoffensive.
Foxx and Diaz, reuniting after “Any Given Sunday” and “Annie” (2014), make for serviceable leads. They’re both likable and have decent-enough chemistry.
Close continues her recent streak of performances sparked by crazy accents, costumes and hairstyles – among them “Hillbilly Elegy,” “The Deliverance” and “Brothers” (2024). Unsurprisingly, her accent’s pretty good and even more consistent. I did guffaw when it became glaringly apparent during a climactic conflict that Ginny went and got her hair done before brandishing a sniper rifle to intervene on her family’s behalf.
The immensely-talented Scott is saddled with a rather thankless role.
The movie’s standouts turn out to be Jackson (he previously played a young version of Regé-Jean Page’s character in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”) as Leo and noted British comedic actor Jamie Demetriou, who plays Ginny’s MI6-aspiring boy toy, Nigel. These guys are great separately and even better together. They account for the flick’s best comedic bits.
While watching “Back in Action” I was often reminded of the Mark Wahlberg Apple TV+ vehicle “The Family Plan” (review here) and I generally preferred that to this, but we all can and have done worse. It doesn’t hit the highs of some recent Netflix fare (“Carry-On” springs to mind) nor does it hit the lowest of the lows (take your pick … there’s plenty). It’s a pleasant-enough (and family-friendly!) time waster that’d be perfect over pizza and pop on a Friday or Saturday night … or even a Movie Monday if you’re like Emily.