After doing a knee-jerk one year delay when Covid hit (as opposed to constantly delaying the release date like most movies did), the new Fast and the Furious movie is out now. I went to see it, despite my tenuous interest in enjoyment of the series.
F9: The Fast Saga (title continuity be damned!) is the tenth movie is this silly franchise. This time, Dom (Vin Diesel) now has a brother (John Cena) who he had a contentious time with as teenagers. Bad enough they failed to mention him in the past 9 films. But now he’s back and he’s a super spy on the hunt for the latest silly sci-fi James Bondian MacGuffin. All an excuse to smash cars.
And they do smash cars… and fling them across ravines, flip them over, flip them back, keep driving, attach rockets to Fieros, etc. It all looks fine and is filmed with the series’ usual level of lunacy. The series has long had a tenuous connection to reality and it goes full Looney Tunes this time. That doesn’t bug me even if I have to mentally nit-pick in the theater. But so what? It’s been heading that way the whole time. I never find these action set pieces all that thrilling since none of what’s going on really matters. Add because the stakes are so low because people keep coming back from the dead.
No, I don’t think the silly action is the real problem with the film. I think they really really really want to reproduce that “Paul Walker Died Making This Movie” pathos they earned by unhappy accident in the 7th film. Now they have formulated an overly long, overly serious backstory for Vin Diesel to “act” sad and angry about. I like Vin Diesel when he’s in his lane… but this ain’t it. He doesn’t find that magical sweet spot as an actor where we the audience have an epiphany that he’s this master thespian. So his subplot just bogs the movie down with overly long flashbacks and dream/vision sequences we’re supposed to take seriously.
Which isn’t to say this film is unwatchable. I wouldn’t say this is an outright bad movie any more than most of the rest of the series have been bad. I think as pure action nonsense, you can have the usual level of fun as long as the Looney Tunes physics don’t annoy you. But I think their love of mumbling “family” has finally caught up to them.
Score: 75