Fast X (2023)
Movie rating: 5/10
Here’s my conundrum with Fast X: I enjoyed watching this movie, but don’t know if I can call it good. In a lot of ways the 10th Fast and Furious joint symbolizes much of what’s wrong with Hollywood today. It’s a movie that has no reason for existing other than that this has been an extremely profitable series for Universal. There’s little character development: Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) grows into his role as a father, and there’s one major self-sacrifice. There are a few major reasons fans—of whom I count myself as one—continue to flock to this series: jaw-dropping action sequences, exotic locations, and a chance to spend time with characters and actors we’ve grown to like. In all these areas, Fast X delivers. Still, this is clearly a series that peaked a few movies ago.
The most interesting new element here is Jason Momoa as flamboyant, moustache-twirling villain Dante Reyes, son of late drug lord and Fast Five villain Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). The movie begins with a bit of retconning that inserts Momoa into the memorable climax of Fast Five, which leaves Hernan dead and Dante vowing revenge. Grace Randolph described Dante as the Joker to Dom’s Batman, and that’s 100% accurate. Momoa chews the scenery with delight, gleefully going as over the top as possible. Cipher (Charlize Theron) coming to Dom’s suburban house bloodied and warning about “the devil” is absurd, but I was willing to roll with it.
Considering the Fast series has long become a live-action cartoon, I’m perfectly happy with this portrayal of Dante. F9: The Fast Saga used John Cena’s Jakob Toretto, Dom’s heretofore unmentioned brother, as something of an “anti-Dom”, but Momoa goes even further in that direction. Where Dom is the stoic, sentimental hero who cares for nothing more than family, Dante is the theatrical, ruthless villain who only wants to destroy Dom’s family. It’s a fun pairing, and Momoa is clearly having a great time.
Other new additions to the cast include Brie Larson as Tess, daughter of Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), and Aimes (Alan Ritchson), the new leader of Mr. Nobody’s agency, which is to this franchise as S.H.I.E.L.D. is to Marvel. Both get a decent amount of screen time and fit well into the rest of the ensemble, though they’re as thinly written as most Fast and Furious characters. Everyone else you expect is also here.
The sheer size of the cast makes plain the amount of bloat that’s come to characterize this series. As much as we enjoy seeing familiar faces, it’s gotten to the point where it’s becoming unwieldy. When Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) appears, it feels like the filmmakers are checking off characters who need to show up. On the other hand, it’s nice to see Deckard’s antagonistic relationship with Han Lue (Sung Kang) more or less resolved. Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) get into a bigger clash than usual, which seems a bit forced. But I’d be lying if I said the scene where they make up and Tej commends Roman on his leadership qualities didn’t warm my heart. These characters have become largely comic relief, so it’s rewarding to see Bridges and Gibson flex their dramatic muscles a bit.
More clear with every movie is how sentimental the Fast and Furious series has become around its guiding theme: family. We hear the F-word a lot in Fast X, particularly from Dom. Now in his mid-50s, Diesel has become something of a lovable patriarch. His relationship with son Brian Marcos, aka “Little B” (Leo Abelo Perry), is a key part of the film and shows how Dom’s talk of family is now much more literal. Of course, it’s also clear that the character of Little B is being prepared as a way for the franchise to continue.
While Fast and Furious is not technically a superhero franchise, that’s what it’s become for all intents and purposes. Dom is the Superman of this series, and his superpower is his ability to do literally anything with a car. It’s both ridiculous and endearing. In the last movie, Roman addressed the elephant in the room: that these characters seem impervious to physical harm. Fast X responds to that as the best Superman stories have: the way you hurt a physically invulnerable hero is to target the people they love. When Dante taunts Dom about how he can’t “save everyone”, it’s straight out of a superhero movie, and another reminder of how far this series has come from its relatively low-rent origins. Still, the involvement of Isabel Neves (Daniela Melchior)—sister of Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky), Dom’s late former girlfriend and mother of Little B—also underscores how soap opera-ish this series has become.
The biggest selling point of any Fast and Furious movie are the action scenes. Fast X has a couple of great moments: the fight scene between Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) and Cipher (Charlize Theron, sporting a less hideous haircut than her last two Fast and Furious appearances); and the climactic moment when Dom drives down the side of a dam. I also enjoyed the fight scene with Jakob and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) against agency soldiers targeting them. There are some cool moments when the cars stop helicopters attacking them. But I have to say, overall the action was a bit of a letdown.
The sequence in Rome is a good example. Watching that giant bomb tumble around the city was a little underwhelming compared to some of the best action sequences of these movies. There comes a point at which there’s only so many creative stunts you can do with cars, and the Fast and Furious seems to have reached that point. Once you’ve driven cars through the heights of multiple skyscrapers, around a nuclear submarine crashing through ice, and flown cars into space, where else is there to go?
Even though I love the idea that Brian (Paul Walker) continues to live on in the Fast and Furious world, long after the untimely end of the actor who played him—a poignant example of how movies in a sense enable actors to live forever—it’s getting increasingly difficult to explain why Mia is present for each new adventure while Brian is not. We’re getting to a point similar to Worf in the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies: that character was a regular on Deep Space Nine, but somehow managed to be on the Enterprise for each movie. By the end of the TNG movies, they stopped trying to explain it, and Mia is at that point. We’re to understand that Brian can never join her or the rest of the crew for future missions where the fate of the world hangs in the balance because he’s taking care of their kids. Then again, if the genders were reversed I admittedly might have been less likely to question this state of affairs. Well played, Fast and Furious.
The movie ends on a cliffhanger, which makes the film feel less complete than every other entry in this series. I suppose it’s refreshing not to have a Fast and Furious movie end with a barbecue, though it does start with one. Of course, that’s because the film doesn’t really end. I’m happy to sit through the next episode and see how things turn out. But as we know from this series, like in superhero cinematic universes, death is never final. Characters can always be brought back. That inevitably lowers the dramatic stakes.
I love the Fast and Furious movies as big, dumb entertainment, which I suppose makes me the perfect captive consumer. But even the most entertaining party guest can eventually overstay their welcome.