YMMV / xXx: Return of Xander Cage

• Awesome Music: Ice Cube's "Thank God", as played in the end credits (symbolically referring to Vin Diesel's return to the film series), and appropriately, Darius Stone's Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Base-Breaking Character: Becky is either terribly grating or a hilarious scene stealer even before she Took a Level in Badass.
• Cliché Storm: So many that at certain moments the film looks like a popcorn action movie from the nineties, although it is almost certainly intentional.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Adele, the Friendly Sniper played by Ruby Rose and Drives Like Crazy Torch are seen as pretty enjoyable additions to Xander's team.
  • Serena has some very interesting depths and interactions with Xander both before and after The reveal she and the others were Good All Along.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Despite a mediocre box-office response in the U.S. — albeit it still earned almost as much in its opening weekend alone as xXx: State of the Union did in its entire theatrical run — it did much better elsewhere, with its international gross exceeding the film's budget in just two weeks. It was especially successful in China, where the marketing focused on Donnie Yen.
• Narm:
  • In most dialogues in the film, especially between the three characters at the beginning of the film, almost every phrase is a laconic and extremely pretentious one-liners.
  • Xiang calling Xander's name repeatedly, including his full name a couple times despite Xiang never using Full-Name Basis with him previously, after the latter is apparently shot to death.
  • Somewhere, there's a sunglasses-wearing youth pastor freestyle rapping from atop a skateboard who would say the movie is trying just a little too hard to be cool with its over-the-top stunts. Hawk tossing Talon up in midst of a shootout for him to break a electrical wire with a kick so it electrocutes three mooks might be the most ridiculous.
• Narm Charm:
  • Tony Jaa wearing a blond mohawk has to be seen to be believed, but makes perfect sense within this kind of film.
  • Donnie Yen's character being introduced slowly and dramatically turning while wearing a white t-shirt, as in a reference to Vin Diesel's own character in The Fast and the Furious. It kills the moment's whole gravitas when one gets it, but still utterly hilarious.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Darius Stone has better luck this time around to defeat Marke's assassins.
• So Bad, It's Good: With ludicrous action set-pieces such as skiing through the jungle and riding the on the ocean with motorbikes, an admirably diverse set of actors Chewing the Scenery and a bare bones thin "plot" that exists only to generate explosions, xXx: Return of Xander Cage is 107 minutes of pure, unadulterated, stupid joy.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While the film got fairly mediocre reviews, it nonetheless fared a lot better critically and commercially than the previous sequel made without Vin Diesel's involvement. Which, funnily enough, was the same trajectory that Diesel's other famous franchise took.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Tony Jaa, who despite his fall from grace is still an expert in films about things burning and exploding, plays such a minor character and his fight scenes are so short that you may actually mistake him for a random Asian martial arts stuntman. Only the chance to pair him up with Donnie Yen, mixing up two of the absolute best choreography leaders in the world (especially that Yen himself used to be a big fan of Jaa's work back in his Ong-Bak days) should have been much more relevant in the film's plot.

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