xXx: Return Of Xander Cage – Release date: 19th January 2017

While xXx is a fun film with some pretty impressive action scenes, that’s about all to like from the third instalment in the franchise. The story is riddled with plot holes and those who haven’t seen the previous films may well be confused throughout with references to previous characters and events  cropping up frequently. 

The story follows Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) coming out of self imposed exile with a tough new assignment given from his handler, Augustus Gibbons, to take out a dangerous group with the power of “Pandora’s Box” which can drop satellites from the sky and tap into communications around the world. Recruiting some old friends, Xander sets out to stop the leader of the group, Xiang, before he launches the plan and destroys the world.

Its a run of the mill plot and although there’s a nice little twist halfway, it did seem forced but if you go into this expecting any other than a big, loud, dumb action flick you will be disappointed. When the action scenes finish, the dialogue is so hilariously cliche that the only trick left is to get the girls to take their kit off.

To be fair though, the action scenes are impressive and whether its Xander skiing down a hill onto a busy road dodging traffic or a daring jump out of an exploding plane, the scenes are impressive. Besides that though, there really isn’t anything else to take from this film. It’s a dumb, loud action flick at its heart but does it compare to the previous xXx films? Not in the slightest.

 If you’re a fan of the franchise then you’ll get more out of this with some nice nods to the previous films but other than that, there really isn’t anything outstanding here that other action films do much better.