This Man Is Rated XXX

So you thought he was past his XXX-piration date? Well, you thought wrong. VIN DIESEL brings back one of his most famous roles to the big screen in XXX: Return of Xander Cage. And this time, he’s joined by some really colourful friends.

When it comes to fans of the XXX movie franchise, there are two camps. Those who only watched the 2002 original where Vin Diesel played Xander Cage, an extreme-sports enthusiast who became a reluctant superspy, and those who also caught the much-derided sequel XXX: State of Union, where rapper Ice Cube replaced Vin Diesel to play the new Triple X aka disgraced Navy Seal Darius Stone. Those from the first camp would probably not know that in the 2005 sequel, Xander Cage was (spoiler alert!) killed off-screen (in Bora Bora, to be exact) by the villains of that film. No wonder that was a spectacular... bomb — it made just US$71mil worldwide compared to the original’s US$277mil.

Well, both camps will be happy with the franchise’s third installment (though it’s really more of a sequel to the original), which opens next week. In XXX: Return of Xander Cage, the titular hero comes out of self-imposed exile (so Bora Bora was a fake-out?!) to clash with Donnie Yen’s Xiang, a dangerous operative bent on finding a deadly weapon known as Pandora’s Box. Triple X ends up recruiting his own group of diverse thrill-seekers, including former EXO boybander Kris Wu and Orange is the New Black star Ruby Rose, to help him in a covert government mission.