Fast X

3 outta 5

The Fast and Furious series is determined not to show any aging by sheer force of explosions happening repeatedly. Also, the roster is entirely gargantuan by now as characters that end up dead tend to be alive again a few movies later. Fast X doesn’t offer any sort of closure as it leans entirely on a cliffhanger. If a film is great like Empire Strikes Back or Avengers: Infinity War, a cliffhanger can make the experience more striking. But if a movie is just okay like Fast X is, cliffhangers are more irritating. But Fast X certainly supplies spectacle, fast cars, even dumber action and even one very entertaining antagonist. Sometimes in this series the bad guys can get lost in the booms but here the baddie performance is gleefully chaotic.

Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is living a good life with his wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and their son, Brian aka Little B (Leo Abelo Perry). Dom’s crew of super-spy car driving folks, Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Han (Sung Kang) are off on an assignment in Rome but into Dom’s life arrives his former nemesis, Cipher (Charlize Theron). A cyber-terrorist, Cipher has been attacked by the evil Dante (Jason Momoa) and he has taken her resources and technology. Dante is the son of a criminal Dom and his buddy Brian defeated and now Dante is coming after them. The crew is soon separated and Dom’s brother, Jakob (John Cena) is on the run with Little B. The Agency that oversees Dom’s crew has disavowed them and the new Agency leader, Aimes (Alan Ritchson) wants to bring them in, although Tess (Brie Larson) the daughter of the former head of the Agency, disagrees. Now Dom travels around the world to bring his “family” back together, getting help from a new friend Isabel (Daniela Melchior) but Dante is unstoppable.

This movie is kind of a sequel to Fast Five, a film which I reposted my ‘11 review here and I officially retract my 2 outta five score. It’s one of the best. I think I was in a bad mood. But even in that negative review I still admit that the finale action scene is great. There’s some smart intercutting of new and old footage to add Dante to the events of the bank vault towing climax of Fast Five even bringing back Five’s villain, Joaqium de Almeida as Hernan, sharing some scenes with Momoa’s Dante. How exactly Hernan died in Fast Five is brushed over until the mid-credits teaser in Fast X. That teaser is another thing that is promised resolution in a forthcoming film. The return of Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw was teased in F9 and he shows up for an action scene here and disappears afterwards. Yet another teaser to be continued.

There’s a lot of plot setup here, and not a lot of payoffs. The new head of the Agency, Aimes, supplies a helpful recap of the history of Dom’s crew and Tess sums it up that Dom can turn law enforcement officers to his side with a “beer and a BBQ”. Larson gets in some good bits like when she has a standoff with Dante and he tells her to get off his car and she just scrapes her heel against it to tick him off. Theron’s Cipher is beaten up by Dante which is always an easy play to make the new baddie seem even worse by defeating the old baddie. Melchior’s Isabel seems a potential new antagonist but then Dom accepts her into his family when Melchior gets an impassioned speech about her deceased sister. The film spits the crew into subplots; Roman and Tej throw down their pent up frustration in a scene featuring Pete Davidson quipping an illegal technology seller. Disel’s performance is the same as the last few movies, acting serious about family and glowering behind the wheel of a car.

The funniest subplot is Cena as the wacky uncle taking his nephew on a cross country road trip trying to be responsible while also in dangerous battles. One of the best things here is Momoa as Dante and he’s bombastic which is great because sometimes Fast series villains can be a bit dull. But Dante relishes being evil, and he always has the upper hand. Also, Momoa isn’t growling every other line like in most of his roles, here he sounds chipper. There’s even a moment when Dante gets to monologue to a couple of corpses about his evil plan, which is amusingly over the top.

Fast X delivers the crazy that one expects, although nobody goes into space this time around. But there’s a huge action scene in Italy that has some big booms with Dante using a bomb dragged through the city that is a deliberate callback to the Fast Five bank vault chase. The final action scene has some twisty reveals and truck flipping spectacle. It is a little annoying that not much of anything is resolved in this one, and there’s so many characters in the series by now it is becoming a chore to keep track of their histories and various fake-out deaths. But there’s a lot of stars making quips and blowing stuff up in cars with absurdly unrealistic action scenes, so this fits in the Fast series. Maybe next time they’ll have something conclusive.