Why Fast X?
“Why are you even watching the Fast & Furious movies?”, a friend of mine asked when I invited him for Fast X. Good question. Easy answer.
Yes, they’re ridiculous and they have no logic. But at their best, they’re mindless, energetic fun. As I grow old, I need those kind of movies and the Fast saga filled that gap until Fast & Furious 7. The last two movies though haven’t been very good even by the standards of other Fast and Furious movies. The last movie, in particular, broke me that I wrote an angry rant on Twitter.
So, will Fast X be better than the previous movie?
The Fast Family’s “Infinity War”
The Fast saga already felt like a superhero franchise without the costumes. So the next logical step for Fast X was cribbing MCU’s Infinity War. After the heist pulled off by Dom and gang in Fast Five leaves him penniless, Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) is out for blood. He lays a trap for the Fast family that labels them as terrorists and separates the gang. Tej, Ramsey, Roman and Han lay low in London. Letty gets kidnapped by the Agency, now headed up by Aimes (Alan Ritchson). Dom has to battle it out with Dante and save his wife with the help of Cipher (Charlize Theron) and Tess (Brie Larson). His son escapes with Jakob (John Cena).
Too many stories, too many characters, too little screentime. This isn’t even mentioning the characters played by Daniela Melchior, Helen Mirren, Jason Statham and Scott Eastwood. The problem with cribbing Infinity War’s structure is that none of these characters are well written or interesting enough to carry their own stories. The MCU had decently written characters, the Fast saga has none of that.
Other than the Dom vs Dante storyline, none of the other stories are fun or interesting to watch. There are only so many times I can watch Tyrese Gibson act like an idiot and get ridiculed by Ludacris. Mediocre storylines can be carried by well written characters. But the Fast saga has never had that particular quality. So the other storylines suffer as a result. Also, I await the day that movies don’t feel the need to fill every scene with some pop song. Good God, it was grating.
The one character that seems to have aced his assignment is Jason Momoa. He is the only one who injects Fast X with a shot of much needed adrenaline. As the eccentric antagonist bordering on psychopathic, Momoa takes the opportunity to play the Joker to Dom’s Batman. He’s eccentric, he’s flamboyant, he’s got a killer energy that lights up the screen when he’s around. Jason’s clearly having a blast playing the antagonist and the few good stretches of the movies are because of him.
There are some who might find him to be too eccentric. But given the choice between Momoa playing a sociopathic lunatic or Dom Toretto boring me about the importance of family, I’d much rather choose the former.
Nostalgia to one’s detriment
It’s a Fast and Furious movie. The story might change, but the basic structure hasn’t changed much. Some villain wants to destroy the family, the Fast family engage in some ridiculous stunts, buildings get destroyed, Dom belts out dialogues about the importance of family, the villain might end joining the family (or) the one that helps them ends up betraying them, they’ll all have a big barbeque in the end. Oh, I forgot about the mandatory street race to remind people that this globe-trotting action franchise started out as as an undercover cop movie about street racing.
The movie feels like a greatest hits compilation of other FF movies. Characters travel to locations found in prior FF movies. They utter dialogues that callback to older FF movies. Even the new characters have some sort of connection to the family’s past. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your connection with this franchise. If you’re a fan, you’ll love these callbacks. I didn’t care much for it. This nostalgic quality extends to the action sequences.
About those stunts….
Every Fast movie post FF4 has one marquee stunt that might be either well-executed (the vault heist in Fast 5), outright ridiculous (Cars in Space in Fast 9) or a combination of both (The Burj Khalifa sequence in FF 7). Whether you love them or hate them, the FF movies have always managed to get some sort of reaction out of the general audience.
The stunts in Fast X look ridiculous. Maybe not as ridiculous as the “cars in space” maneuver of Fast 9, but ridiculous all the same. But all the stunts felt so….rote. So bland. So empty. Even 3D couldn’t save the rote stuntwork of this movie. It doesn’t help that movies like Top Gun: Maverick and John Wick 4 executed superb stunts that left the audience gasping for breath without resorting to the shock factor of the FF movies.
Whatever you want to say about Justin Lin as a director, that guy knew how to get a reaction out of the audience with some pretty nifty direction. Even James Wan and F. Gary Gray managed some crazy stunt sequences. Letterier’s direction, on the other hand, feels very workmanlike, something a series built on ridiculousness should never have. If anything, some of the stunts feel like a lesser version of the sequences found in previous FF movies. The bomb sequence in Rome can’t help but feel like a cheap imitation of the superb vault heist in Fast 5.
All in all, it’s a Fast and Furious movie with a slight focus on nostalgia. If you know what you paid for, you won’t be disappointed.
Conclusion
Fast X is slightly better than Fast 9.
If you’re a fan, obviously you’ll watch it. This is the first in a planned trilogy that will end the franchise. Sure, Vin Diesel, I totally believe that you will end this gravy train.
If you don’t mind the Fast movies as mindless entertainment, then this does a slightly better job of that than Fast 9. If only because of Jason Momoa.
On the other hand, if you liked the movies at first, but the recent movies aren’t to your liking, then this movie isn’t going to bring you back into the fold. In fact, this might be the movie that makes you say “Enough”.