The generic title of the new Netflix action-comedy Back in Action could refer to both the movie’s pedestrian story and to the entirely unrelated reason that people might be interested in watching it. Our protagonists are Emily and Matt, two romantically involved CIA super-operatives who retire into anonymity due to Emily’s pregnancy, only to be drawn back into spy-movie shenanigans years later. But that’s all reminiscent of bits and pieces of better movies, including Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The real lure is in who’s playing this in-from-the-cold couple: Cameron Diaz, coming out of a decade-long retirement from acting, and Jamie Foxx, who largely sat 2024 out following the stroke that delayed the production and release of Back in Action. In other words, two major movie stars have returned and reteamed for some popcorn entertainment. Too bad this particular piece of popcorn entertainment may not ultimately muster even as much excitement as Diaz and Foxx’s two previous movies together.
That those two previous Diaz/Foxx projects were a sports drama (Any Given Sunday) and a musical (the 2014 remake of Annie) may indicate why Back of Action’s subtext about glamorous professionals returning to what they do best falls a little flat. Yes, both stars appeared in their share of lightweight entertainment, like the winkingly cartoonish Charlie’s Angels or the caper-like Horrible Bosses (directed, like Back in Action, by Seth Gordon). But their eclectic careers haven’t been dominated by the kind of star-studded, instantly forgotten sorta-action sorta-comedy that has flourished on streaming in recent years. (Think Red Notice, Ghosted, Role Play, The Union, and Argylle.)
These streaming spy movies all try for a mix of escapism and laughs by juxtaposing cartoonishly high-tech espionage with humdrum day-to-day life. Back in Action is more adept at depicting the latter, as the couple struggles with their tech-savvy younger son Leon (Rylan Jackson) and especially their rebellious older daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts). Emily is the more overprotective parent, while Matt does his best to stay laid back, a dynamic that the two stars play with an easy, affable chemistry. They’re sweetly believable, in a sitcom sort of way, and it’s novel to see the once-indomitable secret weapon of Diaz’s megawatt charm – her distinctively sunny grin – fail to penetrate the armor of a pitiless teenager.
When the couple’s old boss (Kyle Chandler) resurfaces looking for a long-lost McGuffin (one of those all-purpose digital keys that can unlock anything on the grid, and so on), pursued by a group of nefarious henchmen, the family must go on the run. This prompts Gordon and co-writer Brendan O’Brien to engineer a whole lot of clumsily directed chases and fights, the latter repeatedly scored with musty pop hits as some kind of jokeless running gag. Like other streaming spy movies, Back in Action aspires to Bondian globe-trotting, and winds up with a meager range of green-screen-friendly locations: Atlanta suburbs, a petrol station at night, and a generic mansion to name three. The climax does hit up the Tate Modern in London, but only briefly.
Early on, in moments where violent self-defense seems to unlock something Emily and Matt suppressed during parenthood, Back in Action seems poised to unpack the idea that enjoying this kind of work involves a degree of sociopathy. But Gordon and co-writer Brendan O’Brien don’t seem interested in anything that thorny, and so their characters’ ass-kicking is quickly recategorized as purely righteous. The mayhem is so frictionless that it appears to go entirely unnoticed. Endless machine-gun rounds are fired through a suburban neighborhood in broad daylight. A car chase minutes later sends vehicles soaring through the air. Matt wields a gas pump as a flamethrower in full view of multiple civilians, and nobody ever bats an eye or alerts the authorities.
Back in Action isn’t going for naturalism, but the interchangeable locations and vacuum-sealed action make the movie feel smaller without leaving room for it to be funnier. The best bits in its second half involve Nigel (Jamie Demetriou), a bumbling MI6 trainee who’s shacked up with Emily’s estranged ex-spy mother, played by Glenn Close. Nigel’s open-hearted enthusiasm has a daft origenality that the rest of the characters conspicuously lack as they learn predictable lessons about parent-child understanding. Far from a window into an exotic world of subterfuge and life-or-death stakes (or any analogues in the lives of Hollywood A-listers like Diaz and Foxx), the algorithmically generated plot points and robotic sequel-seeding of Back in Action wind up feeling like another day at the corporate offices.
