Of Course, ‘Back in Action’ Is the Movie Cameron Diaz Un-Retired For
After the release of 2014’s Annie, in which Cameron Diaz played Miss Hannigan, Diaz took a break from acting. By 2018, when she reunited with her co-stars from The Sweetest Thing for an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she described herself as “retired,” and stayed that way for the next several years — until now. Today sees the release of Back in Action, a straight-to-Netflix feature film that lured Diaz back onto a film set. At an event in October, Diaz explained that she had stepped away from her professional career because she had to “reclaim” her life and that what she was “passionate” about at the time was building her family, but that she agreed to Back in Action to re-team with her Annie co-star: “I couldn’t say no to Jamie.”
I accept that as her official reason, but having watched the movie, I now think she took the part because its similarity to other roles in her filmography meant it would be easy.
Back in Action stars Diaz as Emily, a non-official cover operative for the CIA. Fifteen years ago, she and Foxx’s Matt — her partner both professionally and personally — were tasked to infiltrate a villain’s house during his son’s lavish birthday party, and steal “the key.” (It’s some kind of digital MacGuffin; don’t worry about it.) Emily was remarkably effective on the mission considering that earlier that day five product-placed ClearBlue tests had all confirmed her pregnancy. She tells Matt; he’s all in; they realize the private plane they’re on has been compromised by terrorists, and yada yada yada present-day Emily and Matt are presumed dead by the CIA. Now they have very normal lives in the Atlanta suburbs.
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When their now-14-year-old daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts) lies about her whereabouts and Emily uses some entry-level spy skills to track her to a club downtown, a skeevy older guy makes the mistake of interfering with Alice’s parents removing her from the VIP area. Emily and Matt efficiently deal with the jerk and his buddies, and while Matt deletes a video of the brawl off one guy’s phone, his op-sec skills are apparently so rusty that he didn’t notice anyone else filming. (iPhones were also ubiquitous 15 years ago, when Matt and Emily were active in the field, so this is especially sloppy of him.)
The next day, their old CIA handler Chuck (Kyle Chandler) appears at their door to tell them a clip they DIDN’T deal with at the scene has made it to YouTube with both their faces clearly visible — and if he can find them this easily, so can any other baddies who presume they have the key; even the CIA will arrest them on suspicion that they stole it. Matt and Emily yank the kids out of school and go on the run, but is there anyone from their old life they can trust?!?!
Action set pieces ensue, all of which will look familiar to anyone who has a passing familiarity with Diaz’s career. She’s involved in motorcycle stunts, like in Knight and Day. She performs hand-to-hand combat, like in the Charlie’s Angels movies. She has horny moments with her outlaw partner, like in A Life Less Ordinary. She delivers devastating insults to her closest blood relative, like in In Her Shoes. And even the quieter moments nod to past Diaz performances. She sings, badly, like in My Best Friend’s Wedding. She’s a devoted mother, like in My Sister’s Keeper. She pickpockets a stranger, like in Gangs Of New York. She goes to England, like in The Holiday.
Every beat is so unsurprising for the viewer that it’s easy to imagine Diaz reading the script and seeing what a light lift it would be for her to perform. Even the title reads like a resigned admission that it’s not doing anything new.
At the time Back in Action was announced, Diaz’s peers were also making safe choices. Julia Roberts was reuniting with one of her former co-stars, George Clooney, for Ticket to Paradise. Jennifer Aniston was about to star in Murder Mystery 2, the sequel to her Netflix action comedy. Sandra Bullock was taking her turn working with Seth Gordon, Back in Action’s director and co-writer, with The Lost City. If everyone was taking it easy in their career moves, why not Diaz? How could she know Demi Moore was just a couple of years away from totally reinventing herself (in more ways than one) with The Substance?
The last moments of Back in Action set up a sequel that depends on you being very interested in members of Emily’s family you haven’t met yet. I’m not, but that doesn’t mean Even More Back in Action is impossible. If sufficient billions of Back in Action minutes get watched AND there’s another beautiful location overseas that Diaz wants to work in, franchises have been built on less.
