For all the frothy motions of the Fast & Furious franchise, whose characters at this point practically qualify as superheroes, the films have traditionally tried to ground their full-throttle, physics-defying set pieces with goofy yet good-hearted characterizations around relationships to family. You don’t come to these movies for interpersonal drama, but the best entries are aided by their attempts to keep things within the stratosphere of the relatable.
Fast X jumps the shark in that regard. On a scene-to-scene basis, Louis Leterrier’s film, which suggests a Masala production by way of the MCU, isn’t any more implausible than The Fate of the Furious and F9. But between its overly lit, ultra-saturated images and hammy performances, Fast X recalls the old Batman TV series, or a spy parody like Austin Powers in Goldmember.
The plot, such as it is, follows Dante Reyes (Jason Mamoa), the son of Fast Five’s Brazilian banker villain, going on a sociopathic revenge mission to destroy the thing that Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) prizes the most and which, he feels, Dom took from him: family. The narrative dangles from such a thin premise that the only thing that sustains momentum, however unfortunate, is Mamoa’s bizarrely queer-coded maniac. In the one actual racing scene of the film, the actor shows up in what amounts to a purple kaftan, his face and hair bedecked with jewelry. As Mamoa limps his wrists, his arch performance suggests a transmission from a time when representation of gay men in popular entertainment was one-dimensional at best.
Dante is part Joker and part Blofeld, and perhaps the strangest “evil” thing that he does is set up what’s essentially an installation art piece. As Dom enters a room with wall-to-wall TVs playing impossibly attained footage of his life, Dante mocks him with blustery quips. It’s a strange performance that reaches its nadir in a throwaway scene in which Dante paints his toenails while surrounded by dead bodies and musing to himself about masculinity. Dante is the film’s biggest problem, but Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin’s screenplay isn’t completely to blame here, as Mamoa seems perfectly keen to let the “joke” be that his character is gender fluid.
By comparison, the other characterizations practically feel like triumphs of refinement and purpose. If John Cena was woefully miscast in F9 as Jakob, a villainous mercenary with a chip on his shoulder, here the part is retooled in ways that play to the actor’s strengths as an over-muscled teddy bear. Perhaps inevitably, then, the film wants for his charming and funny presence whenever he isn’t on screen. Sure, it’s a bit of a logical stretch to see Charlize Theron’s Cipher still in the picture, but at least when she and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) land inside a glass-filled black site prison, the result is Fast X’s tensest and best choreographed fight scene.
Early on, Dom and his crew’s attempts to stop a massive rolling bomb from destroying the Vatican results in one of the franchise’s most dizzyingly fun set pieces. Elsewhere, Jakob wards off a cavalcade of attackers in the Portuguese countryside while riding a Mad Max-style car replete with projectile bombs, and Statham proves again that he’s a master of taciturn derring-do in a scene that sees his Deckard Shaw practically dancing around SWAT-like mercenaries.
Being as this is the first of a possibly three-part finale, though, Fast X’s sense of fun is constantly deflated by all the table-setting. (The film utilizes a metric ton of Fast Five footage, so that its cold open turns into something of a “previously on” segment.) As a result, most of the lesser characters, new and old alike, seem like they’re just biding their time, providing nominal color to the proceedings until they get, presumably, the chance to take center stage. For one, Tess (Brie Larson), the daughter of Mr. Nobody, shows up at one point to shoot guns in a turquoise fashion suit and, given Larson’s blank-faced expression, you may be excused for thinking that you’re in the front row of a Fashion Week show. Tess is there as one of the few remaining allies to Dom’s family, but her scenes feel dropped in without any sense of what the long game is.
Fast X’s appeal depends on one’s ability to ride its often nonsensical wavelength. Compared to Fast Five, the franchise’s arguably most self-contained and sharpest entry, it’s closer to fan fiction or self-parody than the real deal. For better and worse, Fast X feels generated by an AI, as if its sole purpose were to provide one outlandish moment after another in order to elicit the audience’s incredulous gasps. A lot of the time that translates into good fun, but it’s a low bar even for a wacky and often unapologetically dumb franchise such as Fast & Furious.
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