back in action review

made on july 12, 2025

 

unless you don't plan on watching this movie (which btw, you're making a noble choice), spoilers ahead.

 

 

i watched this movie the day it came out. i believe it was january 17 (writer's note: spot on), and before i knew anything about it in terms of watching... i actually didn't think it would suck this much. at all.

 

think about it: a family spy movie starring jamie foxx and cameron diaz. it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but in reality, it misses the ball by a hefty margin, kinda like communism. and, it's not because they're no longer in their prime anymore. hell, i don't care if bill cosby is in prison because of the women he raped; i'd still willingly watch a movie with him in it. the same can't be said about kanye, though.

 

huge side note: i am reciting most of this from my first memory of watching this entire thing front to back. i haven't seen this movie in full again ever since day one, and quite frankly, you'll probably see why. i apologize if i'm missing possibly larger chunks of details in this review, but at least i have a better excuse than the fbi does with the epstein client list.

so, the movie starts out with this spy couple: matt and emily. emily is currently pregnant with one of the leading plot devices in the film, and along with matt, they have this big mission to steal a usb device that can control every device running on electricity imaginable (at least sometime in the late 2000s), and not pirated wii games.

 

now, here's what i don't get right off the bat: a usb device. that controls just about every playstation 3 and supercomputer (writer's note: they're the same thing). and they go in stealing it, not knowing that the polish kgb could've had a backup to begin with? that doesn't make sense. you'd be better off resurrecting timothy mcveigh to blow up the building instead. at least you could guarantee every fucker affiliated with such activities are dead. but, no: this is a pg-13 movie, and not an x-rated porno with animated robert crumb cats.

 

after stealing all of the world's gems and flash drives, the couple head on this plane, and oh noes it got hijacked by the kgb as well??? how unfortunate!!!! >_<

 

they crash the plane, and make it out safely like one of those "survive a plane crash with spongebob + free vip" roblox games, and it just so happens that matt decides to take the electricity-controlling device with him. why??? there's no point. if you know the polish kgb are after you because of a usb drive that controls all of the electricity in all of the land (but more specifically some part of london) and for free, you would want to get rid of it more than a hot potato. and as i mentioned, what's not to say that they couldn't make a backup at any time? why would they carry such sensitive information on only one drive?

 

fast forward to 202x ajp (after john pinette), and matt and emily have two kids: not nathaniel and not superfly, but instead leo and alice. one day, the parents are dropping off their kids, and like any parent, they spy on their kid a bit after dropping them off, because why wouldn't they? i know mine wouldn't want to get away from me either. turns out that alice is dating some guy years older than her named james (how typical), and he wants her to go to this nightclub party. because of this, matt and emily have to take their kid out of a nightclub.

 

ok first off, they're in middle school going to a nightclub. this is like if you had high schoolers going to roller rinks just to hit on 4th graders. that's fucked. also, james (aka mustache for future reference) has no other plot relevance to the movie besides being the driving force of having the parents at the nightclub beating up people. like, that's it? there are no consequences from him besides being looked down upon by alice's parents? i mean, yeah, that makes sense, but apparently legal overstanding isn't a thing here either, because we have to use the rest of the hour and 30 minutes in this 2 hour film for way more action and less plot and logic.

 

now, emily and matt's identities are known to everyone across the world because of the brawl at the nightclub, considering who wouldn't record something as sad as that? anyways, their old pal chuck comes to the couple's house... and gets shot right from the get go. no questions asked. just straight jfk. turns out that this is actually more important than it seems. why? idk. other than the fact that he's the guy that says something along the lines of "the polish terrorists are back! run for your lives!", i didn't write the script.

 

emily and matt are currently on the run again, because they just don't know when to quit. oh, and because they have that fucking usb drive for some reason. why??? as i said again, if you know it's something that bad, destroy it. if you know it's going to get you into more shit, get rid of it.

 

and now emily and matt are all like "ohhhhh we have kids riiiigghhhttt.", so they get them immediately from school, and now the family goes to england, because emily's mom resides there. oh, i'm sorry. am i revealing too much? yeah, well i don't care at this point. chuck isn't dead, and he's actually working for the terrorists. there, i said it. you happy now? you saw it coming to begin with. i know you did.

 

during the time that the wack family is heading to grandma wack, father wack decides to destroy every possible electronic device in possession, because he realizes that all devices track them, and those devices can be used by the kgb to track them, and wack wack wack wack wack. wack wack? wack. anyways, this will also be as important as chuck faking his death. in fact, this importance comes somewhat after that.

 

the family goes to grandma's house, and it turns out that emily and her mom (let's call her ginny because that's what the two people high on lsd called her for some reason) are having a hissy fit over how she was raised or something along those lines. outside of that, we meet nigel, aka the least sucky character in this whole movie. along with ginny, nigel is also somewhat of a spy kid himself. because of this, he is more important than the character that has the same name and look as me when i was 13.

 

hey wait a minute who's that??? yup, it's chuck, and he's back in action. [cue obligatory laugh track] turns out, he wasn't dead, and if you were paying attention to this shithole of a review of a movie i hate, you would know. and it also also turns out that he's evil??? every villain is lemons??? yup, that's correct, too. and, this time, there's no escape for matt and emily. they had to give up the usb drive of all of the world's electric boogie woogie control. so, wait. who got shot then? i guess we'll never know. probably frederick.

 

remember that time jamie foxx destroyed a nintendo switch and a kindle fire?? i sure do, because the smart ring on leo (or alice i forget), is still on his hand, and the family is able to track him that way. now here's my problem. what was the point of destroying every device they had if it meant that the polish kgb would find them anyways? on top of that, they never thought of the smart ring to begin with? what the fuck?

 

i'm not gonna bother explaining what happens next in full detail. here's what you need to know:

 

- it's night time.

 

- they are in london near water (see? i told you so).

 

- they got this big ass hotel with old guys in business suits explaining business with each other.

 

- the kgb are trying to sell this rip of protegent intivirus on a usb drive for $50.

 

- nigel's computer has a seizure like mine did after 6 years.

 

- chuck dies twice.

 

- james still has no plot relevance, and is left undetected. thirty years later, he goes on to become world famous basketball player duck dodgers.

 

- i wasted 2 hours on this when i should've watched dogma for the 50th time.

 

aside from the world's most inconceivably terrible plot ever made, the camera and design work on this movie is way too vibrant. and not the good kind of vibrant. i mean like the one on the movie poster. it looks like it's trying way too hard to be a spy movie with a "modern touch" or something along those lines. i don't really have the right words to describe it in exact detail, but if you watch the movie, you will know that the movie poster does a good job at describing what it looks like. that is all i can say about that.

 

even pixels is better than this, and i actually like that movie.

 

0/10

 

i know i'm a masochist, but this isn't even torture anymore. this is just murder.

 

back in action isn't worth watching, whether seriously, ironically, or in 3d for that matter. the fact that they had a budget of about $200,000,000 for a movie like this baffles me.

 

you could argue that this is hollywood, and that they made this movie possibly during one of the writer's strikes, but if that's the case, why did they think it was still a good idea to keep making it? this movie doesn't seem like it took 3 years to make. this feels unpolished, and yet too polished at the same time.

 

kthxbai. >w<