Back in Action
Cameron Diaz leaps out of retirement to join Jamie Foxx in a very silly spy caper from Netflix.
A run for their money: Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx
Image courtesy of Netflix.
Yep, the kickass star of Charlie's Angels, Knight and Day and Michael Hoffman’s Gambit (2012) is back in action having announced her retirement in 2014. It seems that Cameron Diaz just could not resist teaming up with Seth Gordon, director of the timeless comedies Four Christmases, Horrible Bosses and Baywatch (2017). Or maybe she just wanted to hang out in England, exhibit her maternal side or swap bon mots with Jamie Foxx, her co-star from Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday. Or maybe it was the alleged $45 million deal for two movies that she cut with Netflix. Who knows?
Seth Gordon’s pantomimic spy caper spells out a lot of familiar tropes, mixes them up some, adds the standard nighttime locations of London and throws in a beautiful female hacker with the wherewithal to open the Thames Barrier and flood the capital. Following a frenetic prologue set fifteen years ago – incorporating a spectacular plane crash and an avalanche for good measure – Back in Action settles into romcom mode as Ms Diaz and Jamie Foxx play a pair of loved-up ex-spies hiding out in suburbia. When once they were fearless operatives in thrall to no one, they are now terrified of their fourteen-year-old daughter (McKenna Roberts), for whom they have sacrificed everything. This has all the makings of a savvy comedy, a commentary on modern family values versus the pull of social media, which works well enough on a farcical level until Emily’s reflex taekwondo skills give the game away. You can’t hide TikTok from a middle-aged mom going insane in a crowded nightclub (at least, when TikTok was still a thing in the US)…
The problem with Back in Action is not the endless and meaningless action sequences set to old musical standards, the clichés about English reserve or the Eastern European heavies who have strayed on set from other Netflix action-comedies, but with the overall tone. Although Foxx and Diaz exhibit a reasonable chemistry while fighting against and fighting for their two kids (including the precocious 12-year-old Leo – Rylan Jackson – who has learned to set up a two-factor authentication on his devices to ward off his parents), the other cast members fare less well. Andrew Scott is completely squandered as a “pale, unathletic” MI6 agent, while Glenn Close thinks she has been cast in Restoration comedy as a gun-toting English aristocrat. Even more unfortunate is Jamie Demetriou as the latter’s neurotic toyboy, whose fruity English accent is presumably tuned into Glenn Close’s for uniformity. The pace barely flags, the set pieces are inevitably spectacular and the sentimentality, when it comes, as stage managed as the make-up of the leading lady.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Andrew Scott, Jamie Demetriou, Kyle Chandler, Glenn Close, McKenna Roberts, Rylan Jackson, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Jude Mack, Robert Besta, Leela Owen, Lucy Sheen, Victoria Howell.
Dir Seth Gordon, Pro Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Sharla Sumpter Bridgett, Beau Bauman and Seth Gordon, Ex Pro Jamie Foxx, Screenplay Seth Gordon and Brendan O'Brien, Ph Ken Seng, Pro Des Shepherd Frankel, Ed Peter S. Elliot, Music Christopher Lennertz, Costumes Richard Sale, Sound Paul Pirola, Dialect coach Helen Jane Simmons.
Chernin Entertainment/Exhibit A/Good One-Netflix.
114 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 17 January 2024. Cert. 12.
