Soul-crushing as only a “romp” can be, Back in Action is the latest in a well-established sub-genre of action comedy: the “espionage domesticity” strain, in which spies either go undercover masquerading as folks next door or actually just are the folks next door (Schwarzenegger in True LiesGal Gadot and Jon Hamm in Keeping Up with the Joneses).
Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx play daredevil CIA operatives who retire to raise a family in the suburbs. But eventually the business catches up with them, and they go on the run accompanied by their two kids. Rylan Jackson is their younger boy, who proves to have spycraft hard-wired in his genes, McKenna Roberts is his stroppy 14-year-old sister; both young actors are lively, and more than dependable when called on to blurt “None of this makes sense!” with an incredulous eye roll.
Andrew Scott, as the MI6 man on the family’s trail, looks uncomfortable throughout, as if tormented by an actor’s better conscience. Glenn Close has fun as Diaz’s English mother, whose imperious chill begins to thaw once she lets rip with her own super-spy talents. Jamie Demetriou blusters like a speed-freak Bertie Wooster as Close’s nice-but-dim toyboy.
Diaz and Foxx don’t have fizzing chemistry exactly, but a cosy rapport both in their badinage and their high-kicking fight scenes. The action sequences — aircraft explosions, mass maimings of inept heavies, boat chases on the Thames — are snappily choreographed, but somehow just happenas if suspended in a void, to a self-consciously insouciant soundtrack of James Brown, Dean Martin et al.
-Though not actually labelled as such on the platform, Back in Action epitomises the Netflix category of “casual viewing”, ie stuff you can have on in the background while you’re washing up. At two hours, that’s a lot of crockery you can get through.
★☆☆☆☆
On Netflix now
