F9 review: The Fast and Furious films have a dom problem

With eight sequels, a spin-off film, several video games, a coloring book for adults, a Funko board game and an animated Netflix series (with a Mr. Clean-like cartoon Vin Diesel) in the rearview mirror, Fast & Furious was supposed to be a fully formed cinema universe in a spectacular groove. But F9 finds longtime series director Justin Lin having donuts in the franchise parking lot.

The film isn’t disastrous – Lin’s physically challenging set pieces are more polished and dizzying than anything else in the 2017 CG cacophony The fate of the angry – but it’s two and a half hours of action drama with no momentum. And that’s on Dom who does a terrible job of keeping the family together.

[Ed. note: This review contains spoilers for F9.]

It’s shocking to have nine films in: Diesel, which is in ridiculous action vehicles like xXx, and Riddick. rose solo The last witch hunter (yes, really!) struggles to bring his charisma into the comradeship of the ensemble, and his threatening presence fades F9‘s thrill. In addition to the franchise’s $ 6 billion box-office foundation, Lin and screenwriter Dan Casey (relationship) build the largest installment to date and send each family member on their own mission to prevent “Project Ares”, the ultimate weapon of the end of the world. Unfortunately, they use the same space to erect a memorial to Dom, despite a multi-pronged story that mostly keeps Diesel off-screen.

When he’s around F9 is the cathedral show that explores his family history and forges the ex-DVD player thief as a Hercules hero touched by the gods. Not once does he feel like someone his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) or buddies Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) can rely on – or even him look straight in the face. (Close your eyes, he is too much of a man for mere mortal mind to understand!) After 20 years of fast-filming, Dom is a fully functional blockbuster superhero; he can swing a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat over a Central American precipice as if he were an Indianapolis 500 Jones. But give him the floor for a family reunion and he’s DOA.

Lin and Casey’s overinvestment in Diesel’s alter ego begins with the introduction of Dom’s little brother, Jakob Toretto (John Cena), the Cousin Oliver of the Fast Franchise. Legend has it that Dom and Jakob only worked with baby faces in their twenties on the pit crew during the day and in Street Warring at night. The brothers never saw each other again after Dom Jakob drove out of town – until the Fast Franchise needed it Do. Things. Personally. Years later, when Dom and Letty live off the network with Dom’s son, Jakob reappears as a muscle for a bargain baron Zemo who hopes to kidnap Project Ares and hold the world ransom. Despite vowing to stay out of the game, Dom once again bickers his family to try to stop his family enemy. It’s a standard setup, but Lin’s bombastic soap opera lens makes it feel like Ocean 11 with a hit from NOS.

Picture: Universal Pictures

Stable stand leaves the fast film do what it has to do on some level. The cat-and-mouse game of stealing (and constantly re-stealing) glowing super-high-tech computer dongles takes Dom’s team into a dense jungle, neon-lit back alleys of Tokyo and crowded streets of London. Every place fills Lin’s pockets with the currency of the imagination, which he collects with absolute joy. Where earlier installments built the fame of The Italian job, The French connection, and Mad Max: Fury Road, F9 finds inspiration in the Harlem Globetrotters. The cars catch falling spectators, overturn enemy off-road vehicles and stage elaborately choreographed attacks with reinforced magnets. This time around, we learn that team hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) can’t even drive a car, but that’s fine because the vehicles are basically Transformers and Lin gives his autostars every cash shot they make. To like Godzilla vs. Kong or The Lion King, F9 is almost posthuman entertainment. Nearly.

With Jakob in the mix, Lin and Casey decide it’s time to turn the franchise around and explore Dom’s origins. Like our own Joshua Rivera with his early thoughts too F9who have favourited Fast films were somewhat disappointed after the death of co-star Paul Walker. While Angry 7 was molded as a tribute, a bevy of cameos from old near-actors filled the film and The fate of the angry, and proved that there really was no substitute for the actual stars who showed up – Diesel needed Walker’s energy.

Working out Dom’s character through flashbacks reveals a great void in both the show’s Marvel Lite mythology and Diesel’s human abilities. As young Dom and Jakob, actors Vinnie Bennett and Finn Cole confidently mimick the lead characters, but only have backdoor pilot levels of drama to chew on. Desperate for this to work, Lin is changing the cinematography to match the ’80s setting with the guts of Ford versus Ferraribut the conflict ends up like a brick. Obviously there was a lot of shouting and running after her father’s death. Imagine that!

So that the audience really gets it right, the script winds its way through this territory twice: once as a series of real flashbacks, and again when Dom is faced with a near-death experience. After CG Vin Diesel did Full Hulk on a bunch of SWAT idiots, Dom “drowns” in an underground bunker, floats toward the white light of death, remembers the fateful day his father died on the line, and then recovers immediately so the family can go back to smashing armored vehicles. It’s unclear whether Dom even had to dry himself off after climbing out of his watery would-be grave. Another superpower?

Picture: Universal Pictures

F9 counteracts any character development by devoting a lot of time to the meta-comment of his own ridiculousness. In this round of the franchise, Roman confronts the existential nature of the family’s inability to harm. How are they never shot? How do they survive any car accident? Were you elected? If this were the incoherent murmur of a man in constant action, it could be the perfect banter that devalues ​​the seriousness of any action set piece. But there are entire dialogue-driven scenes that reveal the possible supernatural powers at work in the Fast series. If the trivialities are set up for the series’ possible overlap with Diesel’s Last Witch Hunter universe (come on, it’s good!), Then the film doesn’t take the magical element seriously enough. If it’s just a weird relief, it’s the padding that falls flat – but not as flat as the five-minute gag about which Star Wars character Charlize Theron’s villain Cipher would be, the moment F9 goes full on.

The self-esteem ultimately diminishes the return of Han (Sung Kang) to the series. The long-awaited ruin of the fan favorite’s cheap death after the credits is just as mispronounced as his cheap death after the credits. Nothing matters, Roman basically explains the whole film, so Han doesn’t step back into the light either. Han explains to a crowd of petrified “friends” how he faked his own death to save himself and a girl, Elle (Anna Sawai), who is key to unlocking the Ares project. Each emotional sting gets caught up in a chatter of action, which turns out to be a recurring disorder.

By spreading the team across different missions around the world, there isn’t enough time to give someone a meaningful arc – plus, it makes them go faster than ever – and every character moment feels like half a deal. Letty and Mia enjoy a sweet moment in an izakaya before meeting Han, but their outlook on life and love seems torn from an eighth grade diary. Lin and Casey know the audience want to take care of the family, but they cannot establish a relationship between the actors. In one scene, Dom jumps into a heavy truck with Ramsey and Tej and gives them a look as if they have never met. Wait have you? Even in scenes where the family is in one room together, everyone feels isolated while King Dom holds court in his own close-up. There is no story in the rhythms of this team. (And with the addition of Cena, who is good at barking and sneering at orders, certainly nothing sparkles, but she can’t build 30 years of character work behind the wheel.)

During this time I sat upright in my seat F9: When Tej, just before he shot through space to destroy the Project Ares satellite, imagined what his friends in his old neighborhood would think of him if they knew he was in space. There was the second glimmer of reality it took me to believe that a man’s life was at stake. No longer background story plot necessary.

The bloat that makes this chapter unsuccessful has nothing to do with cartoon action – Lin gets it, and it’s often spectacular. It’s that with Diesel’s cathedral in the driver’s seat F9 does not choose a trace. The highlights of the series, like Fast five and Angry 7He had tight scripts that linked actor-oriented action sequences and successfully distracted from the fact that the Fast Family was little more than one-liners and muscle mass.

The new film dares to look at 2D caricatures as three-dimensional people and exposes the charade in the process. Diesel’s version of Dom is an alleged family man with no warmth or wisdom. He’s a super spy with no tactical advantage or anything to sacrifice. Shakespeare’s tragedy doesn’t suit him. To be lured into the alley by his long-lost brother to drive a sports car into a machine-gun-blowing drone, as his wife does on a motorcycle. In some ways, Diesel as the Dom is very similar to the cars in the movie: durable, shiny, and buzzing at 250 mph. We don’t really need or want to see him in the park or learn how he got out of the showroom. Just ride or die – how often does Letty have to say that?

F9 is now playing in theaters.