In the realm of guilty pleasures, the first xXx movie ranks high for me for absolutely no good reason. It's largely due to the fact that the film, directed by Rob Cohen, doesn't take itself seriously in the slightest, which is sadly something that's become less and less true of the Fast & Furious movies. It's just fights, Asia Argento, explosions, and that ridiculous coat that Vin Diesel insists on wearing. When one is hungover on a Sunday morning and is just looking for a movie that you don't have to pay that much attention to but serves as a decent diversion, few films fit the bill as nicely as xXx.
And that's honestly the same feeling I get from the first footage we see from xXx: Return of Xander Cage in the trailer announcement that Diesel posted to his Facebook account earlier today. After the failed, borderline unwatchable xXx: State of the Union, which had the usually far more entertaining Ice Cube in the lead role, xXx: Return of Xander Cage looks like good old fashioned stupid fun, though the footage here is extremely limited. We'll know more in two days, when the full trailer drops in conjunction with the opening day of San Diego Comic-Con 2016, but my spidey (read: action nerd) sense is tingling on this one, and the fact that the undervalued D.J. Caruso, a B-movie auteur in a similar class as the great Jaume Collet-Serra, is behind the camera makes me more interested than when I first heard about the sequel and barked a loud, obnoxious "Why?!" into the air.
Here's the trailer announcement for xXx: Return of Xander Cage:
Here's how EW summarized the plot of xXx: Return of Xander Cage:
Revolution Studios, Roth Kirschenbaum Films, and Diesel’s One Race Films are producing the third installment, which finds Xander coming out of a self-imposed exile to face off against a deadly alpha warrior named Xiang, according to a press release. Racing against Xiang and his team to recover a seemingly unstoppable weapon known as Pandora’s Box, Xander recruits an all-new group of extreme cohorts and finds himself enmeshed in a vast conspiracy that suggests corruption in the world’s most powerful governments.
