‘Back in Action’ Review | It Is What It Is

I’m ashamed to admit that this review was originally mean-spirited, an attempted dexterous put-down, but then David Lynch died today. He has nothing to do with Back in Action, and it’s only a matter of cosmic happenstance that the two would be mentioned in the same paragraph, let alone one train of thought. I loved Lynch’s work. I also loved Roger Ebert’s work as a film critic. He did not like most of Lynch’s films before The Straight Story, and yet, with his particular generosity of spirit and ability to give people the intellectual benefit of doubt, he was never mean about it. He wrote in his review of Wild at Heart:

“There is something inside of me that resists the films of David Lynch. I am aware of it, I admit to it, but I cannot think my way around it. I sit and watch his films and am aware of his energy, his visual flair, his flashes of wit. But as the movie rolls along, something grows inside of me – an indignation, an unwillingness, a resistance.”

Taking a cue from that kindness, I have my own particular resistance to mainstream action and comedy movies, and Back in Action rubbed me the wrong way. And yet it’s kind of a miracle, considering everything it was up against. Production was halted when its director needed emergency surgery for his gallbladder. Jamie Foxx, its main actor (alongside Cameron Diaz), suffered a terrifying brain bleed that had people worrying more about his life than finishing any film; the filmmakers didn’t know if or when he would return. When he did, the writers’ and actors’ strikes happened in Hollywood. Now, about five years after it was originally ideated, Netflix is releasing the film. I don’t think it’s very good, but it is what it is, and people put their hearts into it, so it deserves respect.

Fast Action, Quick Comedy

Back in Action quickly introduces us to two CIA spies in a relationship. It wastes no time here; the first shot of Emily (Diaz) has her reading a pregnancy test. It’s barely 10 minutes into the film before she and Matt (Foxx) are fighting baddies inside a quickly crashing plane somewhere in the snowy mountains. Before we know anything about them beyond the fact of the fetus inside Emily, they are vowing to fake their deaths and start a life outside the spy game. It was all a bit too fast-paced for me to end up feeling anything about these characters or their situation, a problem that plagues the rest of the film.

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15 years later, we see them in the midst of domestic bliss — two kids, soccer, sandwiches, suburbia. Their kids aren’t very blissful though. Young son Leo (Rylan Jackson) is alright, just stuck inside video games and his phone all the time. It’s their 14-year-old daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts) who is the true menace, rude enough to make a boomer’s head blow up. She’s a spoiled piece of work; her laptop password is “MOMSUX.”

When Matt and Emily realize that their daughter has used a fake ID to sneak into a bar, they show up and try to get her to leave with them. Some date-rapey dudes get in their way, so Matt and Emily tap into their spy days and put a massive whooping on them. Unfortunately, someone livestreams the beatdown on social media, which leads former allies and villains to discern their whereabouts. It’s a plot device that has been used recently, and then earlier and in a less newfangled way with the great History of Violence. That film used old-fashioned local news television to signal the location of a hidden killer. Note to those in hiding: avoid cameras.

A Family Chase with Familiar Faces

And so, just 30 minutes into the film, the spy family are on the run from Eastern European villains, MI-6, and God knows who else. They head to the United Kingdom looking for leverage, a powerful thingamajig that Matt stole and hid 15 years ago. The rub is that he hid it at Emily’s mother’s house. Ginny, played by Glenn Close, is a legendary British spy with a vast estate, the kind she uses for trapshooting (and those pigeons ain’t clay).

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In addition to Close, other underused bit players here include the always delightful Andrew Scott, forced to be constantly sneaky but still excellent. Kyle Chandler appears for a bit and made me think of better days, watching Early Edition in the ’90s. Those eyebrows never disappoint, but he, like Close, Scott, and Jamie Demetriou, are all placed in the confines of woefully one-note characters.

Leaps of logic abound, and you might pull a muscle straining credulity to get from one plot point to the next. The action isn’t particularly memorable either. I’m letting myself go, aren’t I? I’m trying not to be mean. There is a pretty fun scene at a gas station which involves good use of fire and side view mirrors. The final 30 minutes are flashy and never exactly boring, at least for people who are equipped to like these sorts of things.

A Little Fish in the Shallow End

So what is there to say? In his wonderful little book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, David Lynch wrote, “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”

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Back in Action is a small fish flopping in shallow water. It does not require effort, it isn’t very distinguishable from other small fish, and it is not nourishing. But most people don’t expect, nor want, anything more from the kiddie pool of fun that is Netflix. That’s a sad thing to me, and I wish people demanded more from films. But there are worse ways to spend time in the shallow end than Back in Action, I imagine.

The filmmaker, Seth Gordon, seems like a very nice man. He used to direct documentaries, the first one being about his time as a teacher in Kenya, where he got United Nations funding to help build a school. He made a delightful documentary about adult men who take arcade games way too seriously, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I remember walking four miles or so with a friend to see that movie back in 2007. Now I worry I’m like one of those men, taking silly things way too seriously. Maybe Gordon has gone too far in the opposite direction. Let’s hope one day we meet in the middle. Back in Action streams on Netflix beginning Jan. 17, 2025, through the link below:

Watch Back in Action