BACK IN ACTION (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Back in Action, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 17, 2025

At a certain point, every action movie made for streaming might end up having the same plot, so if you're from that future, Back in Action is the one with Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. Like the rest of the bunch from your past and even this one to some degree, they play retired spies who go into hiding, have a comfortable suburban life, and end up pulled back into the spy game because of some MacGuffin.

This one is a key that can somehow control every bit of infrastructure on the planet, and if future you thinks that plot device sounds familiar, it does in this period, too. Just don't ask which movie before this one such a MacGuffin might have been in, because all of these are already starting to bleed together.

Those from that future have at least some answers now, so we'll get back to the movie itself for the rest of us in the present, anticipating your world of same-same "content" that studios hope you'll forget halfway through the movie. Congratulations on surviving whatever political/climate/economic/all-of-the-above-and-more disaster/disasters we can look forward to, as well, though.

With all of that out of the way, co-writer/director Seth Gordon's action-comedy about a pair of spies, living unassuming and seemingly normal lives in the suburbs, isn't nearly as dire as that introduction might suggest. Sure, Gordon and Brendan O'Brien's screenplay seems cobbled together from a generic setup, formulaic plotting, and familiar gimmickry, but it is one with Foxx and Diaz as the married spies, now retired, trying to stay off the grid, and attempting to raise two kids without them catching on to what their parents used to do for a living.

Movie stars exist for a reason, and the main creative one, perhaps, is for them to carry material that otherwise might not have much going for it. Yes, it would have been nice for Diaz to return to film acting, after a decade-long hiatus, in a role that couldn't have been filled with any other actor, but we're quickly reminded how easily charming and funny the actress can be. If she has returned to acting, it might be a good idea to bypass the sequel promised by the final moments of this movie, unless the script actually does something more than repeating the already-familiar beats of this one.

The story opens 15 years in the past, as Foxx's Matt and Diaz's Emily, two spies who have found romance while working together, retrieve the central plot device from a diabolical villain's mountain estate. After fighting some henchmen (Every fight here is set to a golden oldie on the soundtrack, so prepare for that joke to get old fast and remain unmotivated throughout) and boarding a plane to escape, Emily tells Matt she's pregnant. Matt wants to start a family with her, and surviving a plane crash, after some other henchmen try to steal the MacGuffin in-flight, is a perfect opportunity for them to start new lives, under new identities.

In the present day, the couple has two kids, teenagers Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson), who are unaware of their parents' past. After getting into a fight at a night club that Alice has snuck off to, a video of the brawl appears online, sending even more henchmen looking for them and the MacGuffin, which Matt held on to as leverage and stored at the home of Emily's estranged spy mother (played by Glenn Close) in England.

The movie is ultimately a reminder that actors can elevate lesser material, which this undoubtedly is. There's nothing new or inventive here, even if the early fight on the plane at least takes advantage of the setting, but Foxx, one of our more charismatic movie stars, and Diaz do have significant chemistry together. They're also funny, albeit doing the exact jokes one would expect from this premise—lots of bad lies and fussing about them, plenty to do with the generational divide between the parents and the kids, Matt and Emily finding thrills in spying and fighting again after years of routine in the suburbs.

They do carry the movie in the way movie stars should, and the rest of the cast—Close as Emily's emotionally distant mother, Kyle Chandler as the pair's old boss, a straight-faced Andrew Scott as a British spy who has long held a not-so-hidden infatuation for Emily—is game, too. The movie's few pleasures come exclusively from the actors, playing the material as if it is worthwhile.

That means something, of course, but not enough to convince us that Back in Action is unique in any way or entertaining beyond the commitment the cast puts into its obvious jokes, its by-the-numbers action, and a plot that's wholly predictable—right down to knowing a third-act turn as soon as one character first appears after the prologue. To be sure, there are worse movies like this—almost exactly like this, in fact.

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