Director Seth Gordon’s latest film began with a simple question. “It really started with me just riffing on the kernel of an idea that came to me in the moment,” Gordon tells Tudum. “Which was, ‘What would it be like for Jason Bourne if he had kids? Would he have to retire?’ And [producer Beau Bauman] said, ‘That’s a movie.’ ” That movie? It’s Back in Action.

In the new action film, Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz star as Matt and Emily Reynolds, two suburban parents with a big secret: They’re actually retired secret agents. It turns out raising kids Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson) can be just as challenging as high-stakes espionage. When daughter Alice sneaks out to hit the club, Matt and Emily follow her, and Emily gets caught on-camera in a viral video (“BOOMERS WRECK DANCE PARTY”) that leads Matt and Emily’s old boss Chuck (Kyle Chandler) directly to them. Soon, the whole family is on the run, trying to save the day — and reconnect with each other at the same time.

Do they manage it? You’ll have to watch to find out, and then dive into answers to all your burning Back in Action questions below.

Do Matt and Emily reconnect with their kids?

Ultimately, yes. But it takes quite a bit of work. “In today's world where everything is thrust upon teenagers with social media, trying to connect with your kids is tough, man,” Foxx told Netflix. “Everyone goes through it, but at the end of the day, people are going to rate us by how our kids turn out. They see what type of parents we were with all of this going on. So we just took that feeling and put it on screen.”

Those feelings are even more complicated for Diaz’s Emily, who has a complicated relationship with her own mother, steely ex-MI6 agent Ginny (Glenn Close). “All Emily wants to be is a great mom,” Diaz told Netflix. “All she wants is to give her children the life she didn't have. And for her, that was to be able to put her children before her profession.” 

The jet-setting Ginny had no time for Emily as a child. “There's a narcissism to that character that [Close] knew how to embody completely, right down to the haircut she pitched,” Gordon says. “[Ginny] is amazing at what she does, but doesn't necessarily understand everything that a kid might need from her mother,” Gordon says. “[Emily’s] own choices, which are stifling as a mother, are born out of a reaction to what she went through, an overcorrection.” 

As it turns out, the invaluable (and incredibly dangerous) ICS key that disappeared in the same plane crash that allowed Matt and Emily to fake their own deaths… actually didn’t disappear. Matt held onto it, and left it with Ginny on her English estate. With Chuck having been shot and Belarusian terrorists on their tail, the Reynolds family has to make a pit stop in England. 

Emily’s opportunity to reestablish a relationship with her estranged mother also provides a chance for Alice to understand where her mom is coming from. But just as these two mother/daughter relationships are on the verge of repair, disaster strikes: The children are kidnapped, the key is stolen, and Matt and Emily are once again on their own.

Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx Are Back Together — and Back in Action

What does Chuck want?

As it turns out, reports of Chuck’s death on the Reynolds’ doorstep were greatly exaggerated. The dapper CIA handler was happy to point the finger at alleged traitor Baron (Andrew Scott), but in reality he’s the mastermind who sold out Emily and Matt to the Belarusians and started this entire international fiasco. 

The all-American Chandler was Gordon’s only choice for the role. “I certainly don't associate him with being the villain, and so I just thought he was perfect,” Gordon says. “He was just the perfect guy [about whom] to think, ‘Ah, shucks, they've got this great buddy!’ And then he turns out to be the evil one.” 

Chuck’s motivation is simple: He feels he’s being underpaid, and the ICS key is the perfect tool to climb up the financial ladder. He kidnaps Matt and Emily’s children for insurance, and disappears… but the canny Leo clues his parents in to a way to track them down by giving a security camera a thumbs-up, revealing his GPS-accessible fitness ring.

How does the Reynolds family save the day?

It takes the entire team to stop Chuck and return the ICS key to the safe hands of Baron. Ginny snipes from a distance; Matt and Emily fight to save their kids in a daring speedboat chase; Ginny’s eager younger boyfriend Nigel (Jamie Demetriou) steps up to stop Chuck’s henchwoman after a showdown in London’s Tate Modern art museum. 

Nigel’s surprising role in the climax came about serendipitously as the production was running up against the limits of its access to one of the world’s most iconic museums. “We realized that there was not going to be [shooting] time inside the Tate [for any of the characters] to take out the person possessing the drive, o that meant, alright, how are we going to take them out? Okay, we have Nigel,” Gordon says. “He was right next to the Tate and we could shoot there beyond our time window.”

With Nigel in possession of the ICS key, he’s able to lock down the Thames and prevent Chuck from racing away in his speedboat. Matt, Emily, and the kids leap free just in time to escape the boat crashing into a river lock in a fiery explosion. All’s well that ends well, for the world and for the family. Alice lets her mother give her a hug! Ginny lets Emily give her a hug! Matt tells Leo he can play video games all day when they get home! Emily… still won’t let Nigel call himself “grandpa.”

Back in the States, Alice crushes a soccer penalty kick with her entire family in attendance. Emily and Matt take a step back and allow her to go study with a friend with no black-ops surveillance from Mom and Dad: a new experience, but a healthy one. Ginny and Nigel offer to watch Leo for the evening, and Emily and Matt head off for a relaxing night together… only to find Baron sitting in the backseat of their minivan. Turns out MI6 didn’t find Chuck’s body in the Thames — and Baron wants Emily to recruit a family member to help the cause. No, not Ginny; her father. Even after this wild ride, one member of the family still has a secret or two. 

Back in Action is streaming on Netflix now.