Fast X

As I was developing this website, I made sure to show it to some people to get their thoughts on it. I wanted to know what they thought about the design, my writing, etc. One piece of advice I was given was that I shouldn’t do reviews of the entire Fast & Furious franchise consecutively. She suggested that people may think that I created this blog just to review those movies and may not be interested. Clearly, I didn’t go along with that advice. That doesn’t mean I didn’t consider it seriously. Initially, I was going to review up to Fast Five, then review other movies before returning to the franchise sometime later. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want to break up reviewing the franchise into different parts. I started to think of my reviews for these movies as one big grand launch of this blog. Also, to a lesser extant, I wanted an excuse to watch all of these movies again.

This movie marks the true beginning of the end. A few years after the events of F9, we see Dom teaching his son how to drive and enjoying a nice dinner with the family. Roman, Tej, Ramsey, and Han are preparing for a mission in Rome for The Agency. That same night, Cipher suddenly shows up wounded at Dom and Letty’s house. She reveals that she was attacked by Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), son of the Brazilian drug lord Hernan Reyes. Shortly after, Dom and Letty figure out that the mission in Rome is a setup by Dante. After everything goes wrong, the team is separated. They all determine they need to meet at a rendezvous point established for these situations. As everyone attempts to make their way there, they are being hunted down by Dante and the new leader of The Agency, Aimes (Alan Ritchson).

There’s one thing you can’t deny about this franchise: It’ll do just about anything to make the next movie feel bigger than the previous one. I know it may seem crazy to think they could get more ridiculous than sending a car to space, but they found a way, somehow. I’ve mentioned before how the filmmakers have adopted the motto of “Screw it!” when it comes to crafting stunts and big action sequences. With Fast X, they might’ve just started throwing darts on a board and going with whatever ideas came from that. How else would you get the idea to have Dom launch his car into a tower crane in order to have it swing around and knock a giant bomb into the Tiber River in Rome? Of course, I’m not saying this scene, and other scenes, aren’t thrilling to watch. I’m just speculating on how they came up with the idea. They threw out logic and reason when they chased down the cargo plane on the 26-mile runway.

That’s the main problem with this movie. It’s all flash. The entire plot revolves around everyone trying to get to this rendezvous point while evading Dante and The Agency. From that, the writers had to come up with all these different scenarios that would allow them to create these elaborate stunts and fight scenes. As entertaining as they are, they’re the result of a flimsy plot that focuses more on the spectacle, rather than the substance. Now, you could say that the series quit focusing on plot substance a long time ago. I would argue that it’s more blatant with Fast X. The most substance this movie has is its connection with the best movie in the franchise, Fast Five. Dante is the son of Hernan Reyes and wants revenge for his father’s death. From that, we somehow get a giant bomb rolling through the streets of Rome, Dom using his car to sing around a flaming helicopter, and Jakob firing cannons from a car that he built. Granted, that last one is really cool and a definite highlight of the film.

Not only is the plot flimsy, but also it’s rather unfocused. It’s constantly jumping from one set of characters to another. After the failed mission in Rome, none of the characters are ever all together. Dom is off doing his own thing, Letty gets sent to an Agency black site where she encounters Cipher, and Tej, Roman, Ramsey, and Han are trying to evade capture. Additionally, Jakob takes Dom’s son “Little B” with him to the rendezvous point to reunite him with Dom. We essentially have four different subplots that the writers have to jump between. It makes the story lack coherence. Plus, we don’t get to see the one thing these films are all about, family. Everyone has their own missions. They might all be trying to get together as a family, but they have their own obstacles. We only see them all working together once. You might say that the disjointed nature of the plot reflects how separated everyone is from each other. I would say that doesn’t make it feel any less jarring.

While the plot may be weak and everything is disjointed, there is one thing, or should I say one person, who makes this movie worth watching, Jason Momoa. He is the absolute best part of this movie. He gives a great performance of Dante as this unpredictable and psychotic menace who is out for revenge by any means necessary. At no point in the film does Dante lose the upper hand on Dom and his team. Whenever Dom is dealing with Dante, there’s a palpable feeling of helplessness. The movie seems to expect us to accept that Dante was able to get all his power and influence after losing everything only ten years prior, but I’m ok with that if it means I can see more Jason Momoa as Dante. Not only does he portray a great villain, it’s clear that he is fully committed to the character. He brings an energy with his performance that I don’t think many could replicate. I look forward to seeing Dante when i watch Fast X.

During the race scene in Rio, Dante lines up next to Dom to express his excitement about racing him. He says he has butterflies and acts like a nervous kid meeting his favorite celebrity. In their video for this movie, the YouTube channel CinemaSins criticized this sequence. They said the performance isn’t menacing or humorous; it’s just distracting. I would have to disagree completely. It’s already been established that Dante is charismatic and unpredictable. He has a charm about him, but you don’t know what he’s going to do. Dante acting like he has childlike admiration for Dom is on point. Not to mention that he seamlessly turns that admiration into distain. As he talks to Dom, you can see how Dom realizes he and the other racers are in trouble. If Dante were to act like this deeply menacing villain for the entire sequence, I feel like that would be more out of character. He’s not angry all the time. He takes pride in what he’s doing and wants to show it.

A surprising highlight from this movie comes from Jakob and Dom’s son, Little B. Mia is watching over Little B when they’re attacked by these covert agents sent by Dante. As Mia attempts to fight them off, Jakob appears and takes most of them out. From there, he takes Little B to go meet his father at the rendezvous point. At this point, we get this pseudo-road trip movie with Jakob and Little B. It’s actually really endearing. John Cena plays this fun uncle teaching Little B about how cool he would’ve been in the 1990’s with a 5.0 and how you’re only allowed to swear with song lyrics and stubbed toes. Quite honestly, these scenes provide a lot more comic relief than Roman ever has with his one-liners. I’m pretty sure the director told John Cena just to pull from his family comedy movies when giving acting direction, but I’m fine with that. These scenes are a nice break from all of the explosions and fights going on. Plus, Jakob and Little B get to use one of the best weapons in the film, the cannon car. Fun Fact: The flight attendant that gives Jakob the mini-bottles is Paul Walker’s daughter, Meadow.

This movie has a lot of new characters thrown into the cast. A lot of them just have cameo appearances. We get to see Dom’s grandmother played by Rita Moreno, Pete Davidson plays this black market dealer Ramsey knows, and Brazilian singer Ludmilla plays the race starter in Rio, following in the footsteps of Rita Ora, Ronda Rousey, and Cardi B as the famous female celebrity cameo. Another cameo involves singer Debby Ryan and drummer Josh Dun as a couple in the airport. When Jakob and Little B walk into the airport, Jakob is carrying this kayak that was strapped to the top of his car. He runs into the couple played by Ryan and Dun. I’m like 99% positive this kayak exists for the sole purpose of having an excuse to let Debby Ryan and Josh Dun be in the movie. I think these cameos speak to how popular the franchise has become. Regardless of how small, some celebrities may want to be involved in the franchise in some capacity. I would say my favorite of these appearances is Pete Davidson. Not because I’m a fan of his, but his scene is fun to watch. We get to see Tej and Roman fight it out and Han trips after snacking on a “fun muffin”.

Before production started on this movie, it was established that this and its sequel would be the finale to the story of Dom and his family. As a result, we see a number of callbacks to previous events in the series. At the beginning, Han and Dom talk about how they’ve come a long way from boosting fuel trucks in the DR. Then, they toast to being Los Bandoleros for life. In the same scene, Dom looks at a number of pictures hung up on the wall of his garage. As the camera pans around, we hear the melody from “See You Again”. Of course, some callbacks are less subtle. There’s a scene where Aimes is confronting Tess (Brie Larson), Mr. Nobody’s daughter, about how Dom and his team are criminals. To prove his point, he shows her the things they’ve done all over the world using clips from previous movies. This is fun and all, but it’s a little weird that Aimes would have footage from previous movies when nobody would’ve been filming those events in-universe. Of course, you can’t close out a series without bringing back as many characters as possible. We see this with two cameo appearances at the end and during a mid-credits scene. These were (only kind of) unexpected.

Since the plot of this movie comes as a direct result of the events of Fast Five, obviously the writers had to call back to that movie. This movie opens up with flashback footage of Dante and his father Hernan when Dom, Brian, and the team start their heist on the police station. This whole scene is actually pretty interesting. First off, it uses archival footage from Fast Five with Paul Walker. It’s a nice way to have Brian in the movie without using some CGI nonsense. Not only does Brian make a return, Hernan Reyes is portrayed by the original actor during the flashback shots. Speaking of which, the filmmakers wanted to keep some technical continuity between the new footage and the old footage. When they shot for the new scenes, they used film stock like they did when they shot Fast Five, rather than using the digital camera they used for the rest of the movie. Much of my enjoyment for this sequence comes from all the behind-the-scenes tidbits. It’s nice getting to see Paul Walker in the movie and the cinematography behind everything is really cool.

As much as there are parts of this movie that are worth watching, none of them come together to make a great entry in the series. The music may be catchy, some scenes with certain characters may be funny, and Dante may be the best part of the whole thing. However, much like the overall plot, everything’s just a bunch of parts thrown together. There’s little cohesion with the finished product. It’s like the writers had a list of things that had to be in the movie, so they just inserted things and hoped it worked. With that in mind, I will be fair and say it’s a natural result of the series growing as big as it has. It gets almost impossible at this point to scale things back and make a high quality product. Still, that doesn’t prevent Fast X from being one of the weaker entries of the series. I wouldn’t rank it as the worst one, though. Let’s just hope the next film can close out the series in a fitting way and is worlds better than its predecessor.