For viewers who don't want movies to distract them

Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx's dismal 'Back in Action' is proof that style and craft have completely dropped out of a particular kind of action comedy, writes Adam White

- Adam White

It is funny that in the same week that the Oscar-tipped epic The Brutalist was engulfed in a controversy about its (relatively minor) use of AI, audiences were presented with the first entirely AI-generated movie! Or at least what you imagine an entirely AI-generated movie would be: Netflix's shiny, sterile Back in Action, a film so dismayingly soulless that it could mark a new low in Hollywood creativity.

Why Cameron Diaz chose this to be her first film in a decade is just one of the many mysteries kicked up by Back in Action, which is currently sitting atop Netflix’s Top 10 list. Others include: “When did Andrew Scott forget how to act?”; “What karmic debt does Glenn Close owe Netflix on the heels of this, The Deliverance and Hillbilly Ele ?”; and “What is the rate of return for a straight-to-streaming blockbuster that rented out the Tate Modern for an action setpiece, then staged a combined speedboat and motorbike chase along the Thames?”

Mainly, though, you’re left wondering why any real sense of style or creative vigour has dropped out of films like these, with their devotion to standard action genre plot tropes and faint duplication of older, better movies.