Netflix specializes in movies that are surprisingly expensive, are (hopefully) very popular for a brief period of time, and then fade away from the public consciousness as quickly and mysteriously as they arrived. There are plenty of examples (shout out to The Electric State), but it’s tough to beat Back in Action, a movie with an extremely forgettable title that even Netflix power-users may struggle to remember despite the fact that it came out this year and was seen more than 160 million times in just its first few months on the platform.
Critics generally slammed Back in Action, with it managing to pull only a 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s not really the kind of movie critics are supposed to like. Case in point: Its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 60 percent, which isn’t great (it’s no Red One), but there’s clearly something drawing in viewers… and it’s actually very obvious what that something is: Back in Action was Cameron Diaz’s first movie in 11 years.
What Is ‘Back in Action’ About Anyway?
In addition to Diaz’s return to the proverbial big screen (it’s a Netflix movie, so the screen is only as big as your TV), Back in Action was also a reunion for her and Jamie Foxx, who had previously starred with her in the 2014 Annie — Diaz’s last film before Back in Action. Back in 2022, Foxx told ET that he convinced Diaz to make this movie by saying, “Do you wanna have some fun? Just have some fun!,” and that’s apparently the extent of the thought process that went into this thing. Director Seth Gordon confirmed that story to Collider, giving Foxx all the credit for thinking of Diaz for this and for convincing her to do it. And hey, worse movies have been built on worse ideas, and it all clearly worked out in this case. Diaz made the movie, and tons of people watched it.
In terms of plot, Back in Action has Foxx and Diaz are former CIA operatives who go into hiding after a mission goes wrong (someone double-crossed them, and they don’t know who). Years later, they’re married with kids and accidentally draw the attention of the big terrorist villain they were trying to track down when they were with the CIA. The bad guys come after them, and from there it becomes the kind of action-comedy that movie studios always love to throw millions of dollars at — but with the undeniably compelling gimmick of having Cameron Diaz be in a movie again. (She’s back in action, it’s an action movie, it’s about people who were out of the action and are now back in it, you get it.)
The ever-likable Andrew Scott shows up as an MI6 agent, Kyle Chandler (who is in a lot of movies like this) is the duo’s former CIA boss, and Glenn Close stops by as the mother of Diaz’s character (she also happens to be a hotshot MI6 sniper). It makes sense on paper, which is all that really matters for a platform like Netflix. Plenty of people watched Back in Action, and, as of this summer, Flix Patrol says it was the most-watched movie (in terms of views) across all of streaming.
Now Cameron Diaz has a few more projects lined up that will hopefully be less forgettable than Back in Action, most notably the long-awaited Shrek 5.
- Release Date
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January 17, 2025
- Director
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Seth Gordon
- Producers
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Beau Bauman, Jamie Foxx, Jenno Topping, Sharla Sumpter, Tim Lewis, W. Mark McNair, Brendan O’Brien, Datari Turner
