F9

I was a late comer to the Fast & Furious universe as I needed the extra time to kick the tires a little more before I committed. For me I feel like I came aboard at the perfect time, which was when the series said the hell with reality, let’s just make the cars do anything. Only now can we live in a world where cars can be used as nets and gravity only works if the scene calls for it. Apparently the only thing that could slow down this franchise was the last year, as F9 was put back in the garage. But you can’t keep your fastest horse or a Toretto locked up for too long.

Dominic (Vin Diesel) who along with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) seem to be quarantining away from the world with Dom’s son Brian on some farm. That peace and tranquility ends when Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) show up with a job that seems to be the way to get Dom out of retirement. With most of the team assembled, they head off to do what they do best, drive cars really fast and no matter what, always come out unscathed. It’s only when they are trying to finish the job do they find out that Dom’s brother Jacob (John Cena) is involved, which of course only makes things more complicated. The screenplay written by Daniel Casey and Justin Lin, the later also directing gives plenty of time to what made Dom and Jacob’s relationship what it is, but I don’t know if it was necessary. While the series might say it’s all about #family, what we all come for it to watch some bat-shit crazy action happen with the cars. F9 gives us plenty of that, even giving us their long teased about Fast and The Furious in Space, but a good story it is not. This series is no longer about simple street races for pink slips, no it has gone full James Bond (and I don’t mean all the good ones) as it seems they are the only people who can save the world. Of course the adventure only gets bigger and the stakes higher as Dom and the crew must stop his brother from getting a weapon that he can rule the world with.

There is plenty of things to like about F9 as well as things you may not. Sure we come for the action, which to say the least is pretty fun, but you actually need one of those boards with strings to keep up with the numerous storylines. My favorite twist in F9 is that they actually start to approach being meta, in which they comment on how they seem to never get harmed, even with all the crazy things they have been through. Wisely they choose to just scrape the surface with that notion, which actually fuels some of the funnier moments in the film. Where the film faulters is in its narrative, such as it is and predictable as the film really takes the saying “give the audience what they want” to heart. Add to that, there are no stakes anymore and you kind of know what’s going to happen. F9 also acts as a reunion as they bring together the Toyoko Drift crew into this world as well as a Better Luck Tomorrow (great film, if you haven’t seen it) reunion of Director Lin and Jason Tobin and Sung Kang. Who knows how much more outrageous this series will get, with F9 and whatever comes next (the rumor is the Jurassic Park dinosaurs), I can safely say that I am still firmly buckled in. Because the one thing these movies have shown us is that not everything has to make sense in order for it to be entertaining.