Back in Action (2025)
Directed by: Seth Gordon
Premise: A pair of spies (Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz) retire from the espionage business to marry and raise a family. Years later their cover is blown and the couple must go on the run with their kids.
What Works: Over the last few years Netflix has steadily released espionage movies and they are consistently terrible. Red Notice, Heart of Stone, and The Union were among the worst movies released in their respective years. By comparison, Back in Action is not bad for Netflix. The picture is relatively disciplined, avoiding some of the stupid twists and inane storytelling decisions of Netflix’s other espionage titles and the story moves along. There is a welcome straightforwardness to Back in Action; the actors don’t wink at the camera and there is an occasional grit to the fight scenes. It’s the family angle that works best here. These spies have left the intelligence field but domesticity doesn’t quite sit with them. The parental scenes humanize the characters a bit as the parents reconcile what to tell their children. These moments have a nugget of something real; in life, parents have to decide how much of their pre-marital adventures to share with their kids and that gives the family moments of Back in Action some credibility.
What Doesn’t: The family angle distinguishes Back in Action from its contemporaries but the story nevertheless leaves a lot to be desired. Compare the family story of Back in Action to the domestic drama of True Lies and the 2025 film’s shortcomings become quite clear. There’s very little actual conflict in the family. It’s implied that the parents are frustrated with domesticity but there is no marital strife. For that matter, there’s not much romantic chemistry between actors Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. They’re not a convincing couple especially not as people who have been married for years. There’s also little drama between the parents and their children. We get the usual generational divides but it’s all very sitcom-like; there’s no dramatic weight to anything and the espionage adventure does not bring the family closer together nor does the script give the kids meaningful participation in the story despite setting up some potential aptitudes and character traits. As a spy movie, Back in Action mostly consists of things we’ve seen many times before. The MacGuffin is a device that allows the user access to any computer system. This has become a popular trope in spy films and Back in Action brings nothing new to the concept. The fights and chases are mostly competent but the set pieces are also familiar and the special effects are inconsistent. A few images are quite obviously composite shots with the actors filmed against an artificial background.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: Back in Action is mediocre action filmmaking. The movie is not nearly as wretched as some of Netflix’s other espionage efforts but Back in Action is still well behind other examples of this genre.
Episode: #1035 (February 9, 2025)