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f9
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The Fast saga is back on the big screen, and while this is certainly not my favorite outing in the beloved series, which is celebrating its Greyscale: K 100% / K 75% 20th anniversary this year, F9 still definitely has its moments. I mean, this is a cinematic universe where every film seemingly ends with a heartwarming backyard BBQ. It’s still the loveable underdog, even nine films in, and it continues to defy all expectations, logic, and physics to create a wholly unique cinematic universe that is essentially built upon fast cars and family.
And as far as action franchises go, it represents the best of us. Sure, the action and the story fall on the utterly bonkers side of things, but these films really are grounded by genuine love — love for the characters, love the actors have for each other, and love for the fans and audience.
We pick up after the events of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious, with Fast family patriarch Dom (Vin Diesel) and his partner, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), enjoying a quiet life in hiding with their son, Brian. But a quiet life is not what Dom and Letty are exactly built for, so when the crew comes to them with a new mission, they can’t stay away.
The mission involves Project Aries, truly a MacGuffin in its purest form because as far as plot devices go, it could be anything.
But to add some detail, it is an orb split into two pieces that once reunited with a “key” allowing the person in possession to control all the world’s technology. And yeah, typically I would go as far to say that the plot specifics of the Fast Saga don’t particularly matter, but in this case, I would say the complicated plot, built upon too much history, mythos, and subplots, holds back F9.
See, the person who is after Project Aries is none other than Dom’s estranged brother, Jacob, played by Diesel’s spiritual neck-and-jaw twin, John Cena. And when I say estranged, I mean he has never even been mentioned in the series before. Yet, get this: Turns out Jacob is also a drag-racing gearhead-turned-covert-ops agent who pretty much became a supervillain because it was the only way out of Dom’s shadow.
So not only is this mission personal, it gives the characters even more reasons to talk about family. To set the scene, we spend a lot of time in flashbacks to 1989 that reveal the cause of Dom’s father’s death and what sent Dom to prison.
These flashbacks, shot using a filter to make them look like they were filmed on 35mm, don’t feel very revelatory. And it’s not just the jarring difference in visuals that’s disorienting, it’s also the way these detours cause the film to lose momentum in an already overstuffed film.
A typical Fast film manages its characters, history, and plot lines like a magnificent hip-hop ballet. But director Justin Lin, previously at the helm for films 3–6, returns to the franchise with a pent-up need to create. There are callbacks, cameos, new lore, old characters, new characters, and so much more. And for the first time, I feel like your enjoyment does rely more on an understanding of the Fast franchise’s history.
But don’t misunderstand. It is great to see old faces, like Han, who returns from the dead (in the trailer, so not a spoiler), along with some other Tokyo Drift fan favorites. On the flip side, however, the new characters fail to make a mark.
In addition to the greater complexity of lore Lin brings to the film, he ups the gravitydefying action, pushing the boundaries of where we think a car can go. Revving with innovative new stunts and set pieces in various beautiful international locales, F9 is like the Mission Impossible films but with more family and less Scientology. The first action sequence has a car swinging off a cliff like Tarzan, but that’s merely prelude to a car later boldly going where no car has gone before … if you catch my drift. Yet, without Tom Cruise’s level of commitment to realism, this gimmick ends up falling flat.
The bulk of the action though is giddy escapism paired with plenty of humor from characters you love. Ramsey actually drives a car for the first time, two Oscar-winning actresses ham it up (Helen Mirren as a lead foot jewel thief and Charlize Theron as Cipher, who ditches her character’s laughable dreads in favor of a gloriously awful bowl cut), and Letty gets the best material she’s had in years. There’s also a winning bit where Tyrese’s Roman has a meta realization that he might be invincible, though I wish the film leaned into this fourth wall-breaking moment more.
But for the main attraction, you have the pure machismo of Vin Diesel and John Cena, two stars who are perhaps not the strongest of actors (the heavy emotional lifting is done by their flashback counterparts), going headto-head in a Shakespearean-style soap opera, where everything they say is simultaneously ridiculous and sincere. And you know, it works.
Eschewing gritty seriousness, F9 is undeniably satisfying to watch when the crew comes together as a family to defeat the bad guy. After its planned release was postponed due to COVID, I wanted this to be a powerful reminder of the joys of the big screen experience — of the inherent beauty of seeing big, dumb, well-executed action films in a theater. But the result was more of a mixed bag, and the film exposed how going to the movies has lost some of its luster. Was F9 worth the wait and/or cost? Perhaps not. But did it DOM-inate me aurally and visually? Heck yeah.
