Fast X

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

Fast X is the tenth film in the Fast and Furious series, eleventh film overall in the franchise. This time a gangster with a grudge from the Rio heist in Fast 5 is back looking to make Dom and the family suffer. I actually quite liked Dante's whole revenge arc, he's a really unpredictable character that isn't like anything we've seen in the Fast franchise before. We have seen some great antagonists come out of this franchise: Theron's Cipher, Statham's Shaw, Evans' Shaw and Momoa's Dante wastes no time in jumping right up that list. Throughout the entire film he proves to be as versatile as Dom's crew, often outpacing our heroes by a few steps and managing to salvage his villainous plans quite spontaneously. The way he dishes out his revenge and how that all escalates is the driving force of this film. However, I also think there's a really charming subplot in this film between Jakob and Little Brian, the perfect storyline for bringing Jakob back into the family convincingly. It's the funniest, most charming plotline and it has an ending with a pretty decent punch to the gut.

 

The cinematography mostly comes together well; especially in the action sequences. These moments of high intensity are really thought about in a manner that gives us every possible exciting angle of the action as it plays out. I also think the score hits pretty strongly and lends some great emotion to a few key scenes; the hip hop anthems of the soundtrack fit this franchise perfectly but nothing is better than 'Good Vibrations' by Marky Mark.

 

Michelle Rodriguez, who played Letty, really leads as an action hero in this one; the way Rodriguez plays out her intense hatred for Theron's character is well done. Jordana Brewster, who played Mia, is a character that I always enjoy seeing more done with; Brewster gets to a little maternal and a little tough in this feature which she is well suited to. Charlize Theron, who played Cipher, was entirely wasted in F9 but this was exceptional; watching her really show her mean streak against Momoa and Rodriguez gave two of the best scenes of the feature. John Cena, who played Jakob, really steals the show throughout the feature; Cena knows how to play likeable alongside kids but alongside that he knows how to play a character with hilarious comedic delivery.

 

However, the best performance came from Jason Momoa, who played Dante. As I noted earlier one of the real strengths the Fast and Furious franchise has had since the fifth film is the excellent antagonists. Heck, Johnson's Hobbs was an adversary before he was a friend. But nothing could have prepared me for this extremely twisted and unhinged performance. At first Momoa presents Dante as a rageful thug, he is his father's blunt weapon. But then you get this fantastic scene where he gets to match up against Theron; a scene in which he is very light and playful. This approach to never really taking the stakes seriously while wielding all the power makes for one great antagonist. There's a moment in the film where Momoa has his hair up in double man buns and is talking about toxic masculinity to corpses, the fingernails of whom he is painting. That moment solidified to me that this character was unlike anything this franchise has really had the willingness to present to us before. Momoa's Dante is the type to dance to Swan Lake in one scene and hold a gun to a character's head the next. Jason Momoa is unlike anything you have ever seen him in before and it is wonderful.

 

This film starts a little stronger than F9 because it really nicely ties us back to a pivotal point in the Fast franchise with the Rio heist in Fast 5. The issue here is this movie is nearly two and a half hours long and it takes more than a great new antagonist and a cute John Cena subplot to revive this series. The film moves out of the cool Rio flashback and shows a car spinning tricks at high velocity, only to reveal the driver as none other than Little Brian - Dome Toretto's rapidly aged up son. I thought to myself in this moment, 'okay they're going to have fun this time and not scatter in extensive moments of taking itself too seriously.' But that's not what happens. Instead we get a number of long thematic conversations around the importance of family and legacy. The lines read almost proverbial at times and you have to wonder what writer thinks these empty deep and meaningfuls are actually having an effect. The film really forges ahead by bumping every franchise character into the plot while still trying to introduce new ones, it all gets really bloated and poorly paced very fast. The Agency as the big international spy network the team has been helping up until now gets really absurd in this one; watching big inter-Agency power struggles and black sites fresh out of Snowpiercer comes off as laughable. The biggest waste of time is watching Roman, Tej, Ramsey and Han muddle around in what is nothing short of a boring attempt at a comedy subplot to give these four something to actually do. The film even detours for quite a long period of time to pay a stupidly long homage to Elsa Pataky's character: Elena. If this film had a script that knew how to mesh and come together to serve one final goal that would have been satisfying. But really, apart from a few small deviations, this film is content being a long spectacle that just crashes into a cliffhanger very abruptly.

 

The film had some absolutely awful visual effects, the consistency often wasn't there. An explosion might look imposed into a scene or the big scary medical laser bot looks like something out of a cheap Terminator knockoff. For me it was the fact this film felt confident ending it on the slow motion explosion on the dam scene as Dom races away. None of the human performers look very real in that, the background is clearly imposed and the fire/nos combo hasn't looked this bad in a Fast movie in awhile. 

 

Vin Diesel, who played Dominic Toretto, hasn't shown growth in this character for a long time; I find Diesel's chemistry with his co-stars really non-existent - most surprisingly with Rodriguez and Abelo Perry. Jason Statham, who played Shaw, really just feels like he was paid to show up; Statham's completely indifferent approach to Shaw made this scene quite underwhelming. Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Nathalie Emmanuel and Sung Kang, who played Roman, Tej, Ramsey and Han respectively, truly felt like the weak link supporting cast of this one; this crew was meant to spearhead the comedy angle of the film and in a group of actors with Gibson in it? Never gonna work that well. Helen Mirren, who played Queenie, really has overstayed her welcome on these; Mirren giving shallow dialogue while gazing off into the distance is a waste of her talent. Brie Larson, who played Tess, really deadpans what could otherwise be quite playful dialogue; Larson is meant to be a spy operative type like Kurt Russell but it doesn't play that way. Scott Eastwood, who played Little Nobody, is out here doing even less with an Agency type role that Larson; Eastwood clunks through some generic exposition but that's all he brings to the table. Alan Ritchson, who played Aimes, gives a pretty cut and dry henchmen type antagonist; his mean streak macho man persona may have gotten Ritchson Reacher but I'm eager to see a little more range. Luis Da Silver Jr., who played Diogo, is one of the most forgettable returning roles in this film; they could've omitted him and it would barely have made a difference. Daniela Melchior, who played Isabel, is an actress I know can do leagues better than this role; watching Melchior deliver some very flat lines for a character that had two-dimensional levels of substance was painful. Leo Abelo Perry, who played Little Brian, isn't a great young performer; I never really bought into him being a young car prodigy and he certainly paired awfully with Diesel. Rita Moreno, who played Abuelita, is a new character that really deserved to be a deleted scene; Moreno peddling these deep proverbial lines with nothing to them made her character come across as quite empty. Pete Davidson, who played Bowie, has struggled with acting in a lot of roles I've seen him in but I thought he was meant to be able to do comedy? Davidson is one of the worst bumps on particularly awful comedy b plot road.

Thankfully these movies are almost done because this is possibly the worst in the series. I would give Fast X a 4.5/10