‘Back in Action’ Review: Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx Have Just Enough Charm to Prop Up a Paper-Thin Spy Comedy
Christian Zilko
One of the great joys of cinephilia is understanding that every movie exists not just as a work of art, but as a brick in the foundation of its stars’ and director’s careers. When we idolize movie stars and follow their entire lives on and off the screen, no film can ever be entirely separated from its context within those filmographies. Seth Gordon’s Netflix comedy “Back in Action” seems destined to be remembered as little more than a footnote in Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx‘s biographies — but that context is the only reason it even ascends to that level in the first place.
A generic comedy about two retired spies who are ejected from a life of married domestic bliss when a failed mission comes back to haunt them, the film was initially announced in 2022 as a comeback vehicle for Diaz, who has not acted since 2014’s “Annie” remake. The prospect of seeing one beloved star back in action would have been enough to make the film semi-notable, but it also ended up being an unintentional comeback for Foxx after he suffered a stroke in 2023 that kept him out of the public eye for a year.
All of which is to say that preexisting goodwill makes “Back in Action” more watchable than it has any right to be. The uninspired script drags in all the wrong places and the set pieces fail to dazzle, ensuring that the film succeeds as neither an action movie nor a comedy. But Foxx and Diaz would have been charismatic and attractive enough to carry the film on their shoulders under normal circumstances, and the fact that the film is hitting Netflix after we faced the prospect of never seeing them act again covers a multitude of creative sins.
“Back in Action” begins 15 years ago, when its two stars were still firmly in the middle of the action. We meet Matt (Foxx) and Emily (Diaz), elite CIA spies who have recently attracted the ire of their supervisors for starting a romantic relationship on the job. But their chemistry in the bedroom didn’t dull their compatibility outside of it, and they manage to infiltrate a billionaire’s party and steal one of the world’s most coveted hard drives without missing a beat. On the plane ride home, Emily eschews their traditional post-job champagne toast, telling Matt that she’s expecting a baby. He’s thrilled by the news, but the celebration is short lived when their private jet is hijacked. They manage to escape before it crashes, but the hard drive is lost. Understanding that their identities are now compromised, they take it as a sign to fake their own deaths and leave the CIA behind for a life of parenting.
Flash forward to the present and the super spies are happily raising a nuclear family. Matt coaches his teenage daughter Alice’s (McKenna Roberts) soccer team while Emily sells custom art on Etsy and they bond over the impossible task of managing their son Leo’s (Rylan Jackson) video game time. It’s a comfortable, if occasionally boring life, and Emily is already dreading the ways that her routine will change as her teenagers need her less and less. The parents sometimes harbor fantasies of returning to their old gigs, but those dreams are always dismisses as unsafe and impractical.
But as it turns out, they don’t have a choice in the matter. Their old CIA boss Chuck (Kyle Chandler) shows up on their doorstep with some devastating news. Their enemies know that they’re not dead, and are suddenly out to get them. The hard drive they lost on their final job, known as the ICS Key, contains lines of code that can override control of bridges and dams around the world. Anyone who holds it becomes one of the most powerful people on earth — and the world’s most powerful villains will stop at nothing to find the people who last saw it.
With the safety of their family at risk, Matt and Emily opt to take matters into their own hands and head to Europe to find the key for themselves. In an attempt to keep their pasts secret from Alice and Leo, they fly the family to Europe under the guise of visiting their estranged grandmother Ginny (Glenn Close). The global chase scene pauses (some would argue for far too long) as they stop at the M16 agent’s luxurious British compound while Emily relitigates her own family trauma. She spent her childhood resenting her mother for working too much, and opted to take the opposite approach by stepping away from espionage to raise her own children. But as her and Matt try to complete the most dangerous mission of their careers, she’s forced to confront the possibility that she overcorrected and might need to seek a different form of work-life balance.
Many aspects of “Back in Action” — from its simple MacGuffin to a fairly predictable twist — aren’t bad, just painfully generic. It’s the kind of film that even the most devoted cinema purist should be comfortable referring to as “content.” But watching Foxx and Diaz crackle with the age-appropriate chemistry of a couple that still finds each other attractive after 15 years is a reminder that star power is still as important as ever. The days where their presence could turn a film like “Back in Action” into an instant box office success are over, but they should be enough to keep you from turning Netflix off in the background while you do other things.
Grade: C-
“Back in Action” begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, January 17.
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