Fans of the multi-talented Jamie Foxx may recall hearing about the actor’s harrowing health struggles last year, after he collapsed on the set of a Netflix film production. For a while, it looked like the multi-talent would never recover, as he spent multiple weeks in the hospital facing a brutal series of tests and procedures. Luckily, the In Living Color performer made a full 180, finished filming the Netflix movie and even delivered a stand-up comedy special outlining the entire affair. The film which nearly cost Jamie Foxx his life, Back in Action, is finally available to stream, offering an off-the-rails action comedy loaded with high octane thrills. Given the film’s controversial backstory, many viewers have flocked to Netflix to check it out, with the platform reporting that the film brought in nearly 50 million views in its first three days out.
Since Back in Action has become so popular, now seems like as good a time as any to explore the characters, story and unpack the film’s thrilling final moments. We’ll also see if we can look ahead to the future of the franchise to speculate about any possible sequels or spinoffs. Needless to say, the following write-up will contain heavy spoilers for the entire film, so feel free to bookmark this page and return later if you haven’t seen Foxx’s return to the small screen.
What Happens in ‘Back in Action’?
Back in Action centers on a pair of deep-cover CIA operatives, as portrayed by Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. The couple, named Matt and Emily, begin the film on a covert mission to swipe a dangerous Industrial Control Systems device from the home of a foreign terrorist named Balthazzar Gor. After successfully making off with the device, the couple realize that their cover has been blown, as the flight crew at their rendezvous reveal themselves to be on Gor’s payroll. The duo barely manage to escape from the plane with their lives after an altercation causes the flight to go down in the mountains, highlighting the dangerous nature of their work. Emily then reveals that she’s pregnant, prompting her and Matt to go off the grid for the foreseeable future in hopes of giving their children a semi normal life.
Fifteen years later, Matt and Emily are happily married with two kids, and living in Atlanta under an assumed name. Despite being extremely careful for years, the couple encounter a rude youth during a date at a nightclub and wind up engaging in a physical altercation. A video of the takedown circulates the web and goes viral, leading some of Gor’s men to identify the couple as the operatives responsible for snagging the ICS machine years earlier. With their cover blown, Matt and Emily are forced to have a premature discussion about their past lives with their children, before hopping on a flight and fleeing to England.
Emily Has Deep Family Roots in Espionage
Once the family lands in London, we come to learn more about the international spy community, as Emily’s mother Ginny is revealed to be a former MI6 sniper with an illegal espionage agency of her own titled Foxhunter Ltd. Matt explains that he hid the ICS key in Ginny’s well-guarded home years earlier, just in case he’d ever need to use it as leverage someday. Unfortunately, the family’s arrival in London triggers other spy outfits, including MI6, who believe that the couple are in town to sell the ICS to the highest bidder. Emily’s ex-boyfriend Baron is the MI6 agent assigned to catch them, meaning the couple must contend with international terrorists, MI6 spies, the CIA and personal demons of their past all at once.
By the time Matt and Emily can dig up the key, Gor’s mercenaries have swarmed Ginny’s home, surrounding the entire compound. Ginny does her best to pick them off with her sniper, but even she can’t protect her homestead from the onslaught of attackers. Matt reluctantly hands over the key, just in time for his former boss, Chuck, to reveal that he has been working with Gor all along. Chuck takes off with the ICS key, and kidnaps the couples’ children, before making his way to a black-tie event where he plans to meet with a variety of potential buyers. In a show of force, Chuck uses to ICS key to cause a mass blackout across the city of London, and remotely hack the Thames Barrier to flood portions of the city.
‘Back in Action’ Ends in a Shootout
Using location triangulation data in their son’s ring, Matt and Emily manage to track down Chuck and get the drop on him. As Gor’s men whip out their guns, we see that Ginny and her partner Nigel have arrived to provide extra coverage. As the family fights it out against the terrorists, Baron blows the doors off the venue and storms inside with a host of MI6 agents. During the free-for-all, Chuck sneaks out of the venue and steals a boat before blasting across the flooded city to make his great escape.
Nigel manages to snag the ICS key as MI6 takes down the last of the terrorists, allowing Matt and Emily to go after Chuck and save their kids. After a thrilling sequence that sees the couple duking it out with their former boss, they manage to grab their children and leap out of the boat at the last minute, just before Chuck speeds directly into the closing Thames Barrier. The boat combusts into a massive explosion, leaving the gang to assume that Chuck has perished on impact. The kids have a newfound awe of their dorky parents, and the nuclear family swim back to the shore.
Will There Be a Sequel?
At the very end of Back in Action, the family manages to return to a sense of normalcy. The final scene of the film sees the whole clan watching as Matt and Emily’s daughter plays soccer like a normal kid, having moved on from her gripping overseas adventure. With Gor and his team put away and Chuck seemingly dead, the family are seemingly allowed to come out of hiding and embrace the world for who they are. Unfortunately, Baron shows up at the game with some bad news, informing the family that Chuck’s body was never actually recovered. This means that the antagonist is likely still alive somewhere, and may even be plotting his revenge.
The film ends by setting up a potential sequel, as Baron suggests that Emily enlist the help of her estranged father, drawing a variety of reactions from the rest of the family. For now, Netflix has not officially greenlit a follow-up to Back in Action, though it seems clear that it’s only a matter of time before the order comes down. Even though many professional critics found the movie to be a little shallow, it pulled massive streaming numbers, and seemed to get plenty of thumbs up from viewers across the globe. If Netflix does agree to develop a sequel, it would almost certainly see major mainstream success.
Did ‘Back in Action’ Really Almost Kill Jamie Foxx?
As Foxx explained during his Netflix special, What Had Happened Was, he suffered a stroke and brain bleed on the set of Back in Action, which to him felt like nothing more than a bad headache. Once crew members saw that he collapsed, the father of two was rushed to the hospital, halting filming on Back in Action for several months as he made his recovery. Though it may be a humorous turn of phrase to suggest that the action comedy nearly killed Jamie Foxx, the truth is that the film may have saved him. If he were at home alone when the stroke came on, he could have lost major brain function before someone found him, or even died. Luckily there were trained medical experts on site who were able to rush the 57-year-old to the hospital where he received the full care he needed.
In truth, Back in Action lives up to its name in more ways than one. Obviously, the title references Matt and Emily’s need to return to the action of the spy life after they are located by Chuck and his mercenaries. The title also works as a play on Cameron Diaz coming out of retirement, given that she hasn’t appeared as a leading woman since the 2014 Annie reboot. Finally, the film’s title inadvertently predicted the miraculous recovery that Jamie Foxx underwent during filming as he went from spending weeks in a coma to being fully back in action and ready to finish the film.
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