Back in Action (2025)

Meh in action

The various social media circles and movie meme accounts I follow have settled on a term for this kind of film: “Netflix slop.” Sure, that phrase works. These are over-budgeted films produced by the streaming service, and they are discouraging for lovers of the art form of film. The incentives are totally different: The viewer barrier to entry is the click of a button on the streamer rather than a $15 cinema ticket. In a movie theater, you’re in your seat for the full 100 minutes through a story’s ebbs and flows. But on Netflix, all it takes is the tap of a thumb for a viewer to bail. The adrenaline needs to be non-stop.

It’s not a great model for storytelling, but it works as the cinematic equivalent of a bag of Skittles. Grab a piece, chew it, sugar rush, swallow, repeat. Every 10-20 minutes is a new mini-set piece with just enough of a hook to bring you into the next one. But Skittles are not satiating, and almost all of these movies are bad. I constantly point to Ghosted as the Platonic ideal of this form (derogatory): content for the streaming machine to pop up the charts for a week, burn a few subscriber bucks, etc.

With all of that as prelude, Back in Action is much closer to the peak of Netflix slop than the gutter. A combination of charming stars playing to their strengths, a story shamelessly and functionally modeled after charming forbears, and a pleasing variety of settings and scenarios make it eminently watchable for its 100 frictionless minutes.

The film serves as the return of Cameron Diaz to Hollywood after a decade-long hiatus. Hey, you might say she’s “back in action!” The story is about two retired spies (Diaz and Jamie Foxx) getting pulled into a job. Hey, you might say they’re “back in action!”

Matt (Foxx) and Emily (Diaz) are former spy partners who fell in love then disappeared when a mission went south and their handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler) presumed them dead. Emily was pregnant, and the pair decided to vanish into suburbia as “normal” parents. Fifteen years later, they have a teen daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts) and a tween son Leo (Rylan Jackson), and have adopted dorky upper-middle-class parenthood with all of its stereotypical signifiers. They completely hide their past from their kids.

Following an inadvertent viral TikTok video, the spies are outed and on the run to finish the mission that went bad in the first place. They suspect MI6 collaborator Baron (Andrew Scott) as the one who betrayed them. They fly to England to retrieve the McGuffin, here called “the ICS key” or some such spy malarkey, at a manor owned by Emily’s mom (Glenn Close), an ex-spy herself. The whole McGuffin thread is a little undercooked and simply a vessel to get the characters present for some London-based set pieces. (The script explains Diaz’s lack of accent despite an English background as going to boarding school in the US, but I still don’t buy it; she’s very Californian.) Unsurprisingly, Baron is quickly on their tail, and possibly in cahoots with evil Russians.

It goes more or less where you’d expect from there: chases and kidnappings and trickery and a couple of gadgets. Characters reveal their pasts to each other and bicker. Comic relief arrives in the form of Jamie Demetrious, an English comedian who appeared in Fleabag, as Glenn Close’s amusing boy toy. Generational tensions are addressed. Mediocre CGI explodes. Et cetera.

It’s a diverting time. Whatever charm the film offers comes from Foxx and Diaz’s star power. You wouldn’t guess Diaz has been out of the game for years. She is not remarkably good or bad. She is comfortable and nonchalant, which is perhaps surprising. It does not feel like a big comeback performance, which is probably intentional. It’s like she never left. But the pair have solid chemistry and good quipping chops, though Foxx is occasionally a little flop-sweaty in his delivery. But the pair very much register as young-Gen-X parents who haven’t entirely given up on their youth. I know a few people just like them. Foxx and Diaz look several years younger than their respective 57 and 52 years, and director-writer Seth Gordon’s script casts them as early-to-mid-40s.

Where the film flounders is in the direction, which is illegible and mostly boring. There are a couple of fun moments. Diet Coke and Mentos, a mid-’00s relic, get a signature stunt — hey, you might say they’re “back in action!” But anything hand-to-hand is poorly shot and edited to ribbons. It’s the opposite of Love Hurts (which is not “Netflix slop” though it looks like it): the action here weighs everything else down rather than outclassing everything surrounding it in production quality like that film. You could probably combine the strengths of each and end up with a half-entertaining movie.

One recurrent trait of “Netflix slop” with stupidly high budgets (I’ve seen $100+ million reported on this) is luxurious and gauche needle drops — ten seconds of soul classics in the background for character introductions, for example. They are distracting here. The one I actually enjoyed is the cheesy dancing to “Push It,” which fits in with the corny parents aesthetic.

Close, Chandler, and Scott are all here for a paycheck, but are never anchors on the movie. The kid actors are exactly replacement level. It’s a shame, because Spy Kids — one of the obvious touchpoints for this film — found success in balancing both the charm and plot responsibility of the kids and grown-ups. Back in Action is more Mr. and Mrs. Smith with kids.

It’s a disposable experience, but it has an unobjectionable tone and spirit. Of all the kinds of movie “slop,” Netflix or otherwise, I don’t mind a boilerplate family story with charming stars giving relatable, self-deprecating turns . I would never mistake Back in Action for good cinema, but given the outright drubbing it’s received elsewhere, I didn’t hate myself nearly as much as I expected when the credits rolled.

Is It Good?

Not Very Good (3/8)

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.