F9: The Fast Saga (2021)
Movie rating: 6/10
It’s always amusing to me remembering my introduction to the Fast and Furious franchise. When Fast & Furious 6 came out in 2013, I hadn’t seen any of the movies, and resolved to watch the first five so I could get caught up with the series’ plot. When the credits rolled on Fast Five, I had my epiphany: “Wow, I didn’t need to watch any of those. The plots of these movies don’t matter.” Old habits die hard though. With Fast X in theatres, I felt it necessary to watch F9 so I was all caught up with the latest twists of the “Fast Saga” before checking out the new one.
Was it worth it? Yes, in the sense that all these movies are stupidly entertaining and keep trying to outdo themselves with every new one. F9 isn’t anywhere near the best of the series, but I enjoyed it thoroughly despite it being way too long. That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to criticize. Once again I marveled at how far the series has come since its relatively low-budget and low-stakes origins (the original Fast and the Furious, if you’ll recall, was an enjoyable Point Break ripoff about street racers trying to steal TVs with built-in VHS players). Ever since the turning point of Fast Five, which transformed the series from street-racing flicks to over-the-top heist/spy movies, the Fast and Furious movies have best been enjoyed as living cartoons. The laws of physics are cheerfully disregarded at every turn.
That disregard for reality is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gives free reign to filmmakers to imagine any car-based action set piece they can imagine. On the other hand, the lack of consequences for characters who never get seriously hurt amid all these crazy stunts not only diminishes the dramatic stakes, but takes its toll on the effectiveness of the action. The fight between series lead Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his heretofore unmentioned, estranged brother Jakob (John Cena) is a perfect example. As fun as it was to watch these two pummel each other, seeing them break through walls head first or fall multiple stories onto the streets below with no real physical damage meant I might as well have been watching the Looney Tunes.
In the end it didn’t matter much. The series is clearly showing diminishing returns both creatively and at the box office. The filmmakers are running out of ideas of ridiculous things to do with cars. Charlize Theron’s villain Cipher—who continues to sport some of the worst haircuts you’ve ever seen—monologuing within a clear jail cell is like a parody of a trope done to death since The Dark Knight and Skyfall (though the punchline to her Star Wars speech was admittedly funny). But as someone who enjoys the Fast and Furious movies as big dumb fun, this one ticked all the boxes. If you’re a series fan, you won’t be disappointed.
John Cena proves to be a valuable addition to the cast. In terms of former wrestlers turned actors who have joined the Fast and Furious series, Cena is a welcome replacement for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson—the latter of whom has begun to wear out his welcome for me. Once touted as a successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger as an action star, Johnson never fulfilled that potential due to an inclination to always play it safe, resulting in a frustratingly bland filmography. Like Johnson, Cena has screen presence to spare, but he’s more willing to take chances and poke fun at himself. He’s a great foil for Diesel here.
In terms of story structure if not quality, F9 is the Godfather Part II of the series. The film starts with a flashback to 1989, in which a young Dom (Vinnie Bennett) and Jakob (Finn Cole) witness the death of their father Jack (J.D. Pardo) in a race—as in, Jack’s car flips through the air and explodes after a rival clips him. The flashbacks continue intermittently. With Jakob having been the last one to work on Jack’s car, Dom concludes that Jakob killed him. Jakob goes his own way after losing a street race with Dom, and as one might expect in this world, ends up become a superspy/assassin/terrorist or whatever. The paths of Dom and Jakob cross again when they seek to acquire this film’s MacGuffin, a device called Project Aries that can hack into any computer system in the planet. Typical James Bond stuff, basically. There are also some cool, very unrealistic action scenes involving super-magnets.
I’ve thought a lot about James Bond watching the last few Fast and Furious movies, because this series for my money is the best modern successor to the James Bond formula. Only Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible films come close. Like Bond, the Fast and Furious series offers a standard array of elements: male fantasy heroes, cool cars, spectacular action, globe-trotting locations, world-threatening villains, beautiful women. There are some obvious differences: Fast and Furious clearly has more focus on cars, and more varied roles for women. Like the Daniel Craig-era James Bond, Fast and Furious has arguably matured in terms of its treatment of women. You can argue I’m setting the bar pretty low here. But I was surprised that F9 had only one scene (two, if you count a flashback) of dancing women with the camera focused on their posteriors—a Fast and Furious trademark, but here it’s almost perfunctory.
Part of that, I think, is wrapped up with the advancing age of the characters. Dom has always been about “family”, but he’s never been more of a family man than he is here, raising son Brian Marcus (Isaac and Immanuel Holdane) with wife Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez). Vin Diesel is in his mid-50s now, and as Roger Moore learned in his last tenure as Bond at age 58, there comes a point at which it’s unbecoming for even the most macho male action hero to be cavorting with women young enough to be his daughter (though not all former Bonds would agree). That’s especially the case for a hero whose guiding principle, even in his younger days, has always been “family”.
This brings me to the not-so-secret weapon of the Fast movies, which is that despite their primary appeal being jaw-dropping car-related action, the family theme provides an emotional core to the movies embodied in its cast. OK, it’s corny even saying that, but still true. There was an earnestness to the first couple Fast and Furious movies that introduced us to these characters. Growing familiarity and the passage of time have a way of making us invested in characters who on paper don’t amount to all that much.
None of the characters in these movies are all that deep, but that doesn’t matter. We like Dom’s crew, his “family”. Seeing Dom, Letty, Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Han Lue (Sung Kang—not a spoiler since he’s in both the trailer and poster), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and the rest is like seeing old friends. Even though—and again, this is only a spoiler if you’ve never seen a Fast and Furious movie—ending these movies with a barbecue might be getting stale at this point, it warms my heart every time (thought I really want to know how much Corona is paying for product placement in these movies). Even the reappearance of Tokyo Drift leads Earl (Jason Tobin) and Twinkie (Bow Wow), who have apparently learned rocket science since we last met them, is welcome. When characters note there’s one empty chair at the barbecue and a car pulls up, we all know who it is.
Having Paul Walker’s Brian live on in the fictional world gets right to the heart of what makes movies so magical: the ability to forever preserve the images, emotions, and people that are so fleeting in real life.
These movies are ridiculous, it’s true—and ridiculously fun. Pitch Meetings already covered how little the plot makes sense, so I won’t regurgitate much of it here. The main thing that stands out is how all these characters who started out relatively grounded have become experts at fighting, computer hacking, and whatever other skill the plot needs them to have. At one point during the climax, for example, Mia talks about hacking into the satellite uplink or whatever. How does she know anything about that? You know what? I was fine with it. The way I see it, when you’ve been through as many globe-threatening spy adventures as these characters have, you pick up a few skills along the way.
No review of F9 would be complete without mentioning the best part of the movie (spoiler, I guess): when they finally made the meme real. Yes, they go to space in this one. And I don’t care what anyone says: the sight of a Pontiac Fiero in low Earth orbit was maybe the most memorable image of what the Fast and Furious series has become, for better or for worse, and filled me with genuine awe. This is a series that will stop at nothing to entertain its audience. No matter how nonsensical and cartoony the plots and action scenes become, I have to respect that.