For more than 20 years, the Fast and Furious franchise has been celebrated for its over-the-top action sequences, lunkheaded sincerity and cavalier approach to logic. When the balance is right, these are features, not bugs. But when that balance is off, as it is in the new Fast X, the result is a cinematic pileup that suggests the series is finally running out of gas.
For those late to the barbecue, Fast X doesn’t waste time catching them up. The film starts with a flashback to the climax of the series’ fifth entry – easily its best – revisiting Dominic Torretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) as they speed down the streets of Rio, dragging a drug kingpin’s massive safe behind them. What they don’t know is that the cartel boss’ son, Dante (Jason Momoa), watched the whole thing and has been planning revenge against Dom and his crew for 10 years, eager to make them suffer.
Flash-forward to the present day, when we catch up with the crew enjoying Coronas and burgers in Dom’s backyard after a speech from Dom’s grandmother (Rita Moreno). Roman (Tyrese Gibson) is about to take half the crew to Rome to pull off a job for the mysterious Agency that’s backed them for the past four films. But it’s a double-cross by Dante, who spends the rest of the film chasing down the gang while Dom’s brother Jacob (John Cena) protects his 8-year-old nephew on the road.
The story is messy and overstuffed. For over two hours, the film cuts between Dom’s attempts to track down Dante in Rio, Roman and his gang’s misadventures in Europe, Jacob’s road trip, and Letty’s (Michelle Rodriguez) quest to escape a top-secret prison with nemesis Cipher (Charlize Theron). There are the requisite fist fights, explosions and, of course, car chases. But none of it makes a lick of sense, and despite the fast-paced action, the film meanders.
To complain that a Fast and Furious movie is stupid is to misunderstand the spirit of the enterprise. These movies have always been proudly dumb, fueled by a joyful lack of pretension and eagerness to genre hop. They began as homages to drive-in flicks, took a detour through the heist genre, and then became a combination of James Bond and superhero movies with more exhaust fumes and baby oil. When that’s matched with a focused story, exquisitely designed action sequences, sincere monologues about family and a liberal dose of humor, the result is a ton of fun. When something’s off, the series derails.
Fast X is directed by Louis Leterrier, the helmer of The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans, and Transporter 2. On paper, that seems appropriate, as those films’ disparate genres seem to have been tossed in a blender here. And Leterrier stages some fun action sequences. There’s a chase through Rome where cars play pinball with a neutron bomb, several wince-inducing close-quarter brawls, and a chase involving helicopters, mercenaries and a “cannon car” that occasionally hits the absurd heights of the best of the series. But Leterrier too often undercuts these sequences with choppy editing and an over-reliance on CGI. The franchise’s best moments came from top-notch stunt work and the thrill of watching metal collide with metal; even if the computer-generated effects are photo-realistic, there’s still something tangible lost in the translation.
Leterrier is hampered by a script that, rumor has it, was constantly being rewritten. I believe that rumor; it feels like it’s being written as the film plays. Characters seem to cross the globe in a manner of minutes, bad guys pop up in one location and then are halfway around the world in the next scene. The film’s a running series of fetch quests and excuses to keep the group split up that lack any narrative momentum, and the tone careens from genre to genre and tone to tone. One minute, Jacob and Dom’s son are bonding over a car equipped with cannons; the next, Momoa’s villain is painting the nails of corpses. Dom’s search for Dante takes him to the gritty streets of Rio while Letty and Cipher spend most the film in a black ops prison that feels ripped from an X-Men comic. There’s less a plot than a series of cameos, callbacks, and Easter eggs that make Marvel movies look self-contained. On their own, no single scene is awful; strung together, it’s a chaotic mess, and that’s before it gets to the Marvel-inspired cliffhanger that tells audiences they have to wait two years to see how this all shakes out.
The studio machinations are so clear that they feel obligatory, tipping into self-parody. Dom’s obsession with family, once the dunder-headed but big-hearted center of the franchise, is now a much commented-on joke, and the personal stakes that once anchored this series mean nothing when none of the characters seem to be able to die (at least two characters in this movie have “died” in previous F&F films, and several reveals hint that more franchise favorites may be immortal).
Much of the old crew is tired by this point. Diesel spends most of the film spouting platitudes about fatherhood and alternating between two facial expressions. The chemistry between Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris, often the highlight of these movies, feels forced. After being brought back to fan cheers in F9, Sung Kang has little to do except engage in a quickly extinguished grudge match with Jason Statham and unwittingly eat drug-spiked muffins with Pete Davidson. Other characters, like Nathalie Emmanuel’s tech-whiz Ramsey, just fade into the background; two films in, and I still don’t know anything about the character other than she’s named Ramsey and she’s a tech whiz. Rodriguez has energy, but lacks the humor and passion that made her so memorable recently in Dungeons and Dragons.
Jason Momoa in “Fast X.” Photo by Universal Pictures.
But the cast is too loaded with talent to keep it totally boring. There are four Oscar-winning actresses in the cast – in addition to Theron and Moreno, the brings back Helen Mirren for a scene, and Brie Larson enters the franchise as the daughter or Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody from previous films. The film jolts to life whenever they’re on screen. Theron’s knowingly evil hacker is fun to watch, even when the character is mostly wasted, and Larson brings a fun energy to her small role. John Cena has a great time in a totally different movie from anyone else, spending most of his time shuffling a kid around the globe. F9 felt like a waste of the actor because of how glum the usually charismatic Cena was; while Fast X gives him a personality transplant that makes no logical sense, it’s still a lot of fun to watch him blow stuff up with a tyke in tow.
But the film’s best element – one that actually might be one of the most engaging performances in the franchise – is the addition of Momoa as the hilariously evil Dante, described by several characters (and himself) as The Devil. In a series so obsessed with uber-masculine preening, Momoa nearly skips on screen, taunting the heroes with flirty quips and having a grand old time being a psychotic threat. Momoa blows raspberries at his foes, pops up out of nowhere like a demented Bugs Bunny, and in one scene wears a pink robe while painting the nails of two corpses. It’s a strange performance that, again, is anchored to no discernable reality, but it’s at such right angles to every other performance that it’s a hoot to watch.
Fast X is far from the worst film in the 23-year-old franchise, but it also never reaches the heights of the saga’s best. Fans will be entertained in the moment but likely angered by the way it peters out to a non-ending (before receiving a mid-credits scene that will likely have them coming back for the eleventh film anyways). What was once a surprisingly fresh, fun, and entertaining ride now feels like an obligatory commute, and it’s probably time Diesel and company figured out where to park.
