F9 Review — To Infinity and Beyond
It is only a matter of time until they crossover with the Avengers at this point.
Action film aficionados should not be strangers to the Fast & Furious franchise by now. Known for its humble beginnings involving illegal street racing, the franchise has evolved into a mega-blockbuster film series with world-ending espionage plotlines complemented with over the top action set pieces that keeps on raising the bar with every new installment. Naturally the newest installment, Fast and Furious 9 or F9 as it is called, is no different.
F9’s story started with Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) settling in retirement for the fourth time in the franchise to raise Dom’s son Brian. However, their time of peace and quiet was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Dom’s brother Jakob (John Cena) and his plot to steal a device capable of hacking into every weapons system in the world.
Seeing that Jakob is family — ‘family’ being the key word here — to Dom, he came off retirement for the umpteenth time put a stop to his brother’s plans. Of course, Dom is joined by his usual crew of supersoldiers consisting of ex-criminal Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), mechanic Tej Parker (Ludacris), hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), his own sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), and the previously thought-dead street racer Han (Sung Kang).
If you are watching F9 ONLY for the ridiculous over the top action, you won’t be disappointed. The action set pieces in F9 are nothing short of spectacular and jaw-dropping. Things in the film can get so over the top, you will not be surprised if the next installment will fully take place in space! Even so, to his credit, director Justin Lin had made sure that the spectacle on-screen is choreographed as cleanly as possible. From the (relatively) grounded fight scenes to the gravity-defying sequences, everything is easy to digest despite of the film’s fast pace. It might have been full of cholesterol and saturated fat, but at least it’s easy to chew.
All the action sequences would have turned bland quick if it weren’t for the quirky and devil-may-care approach to death-defying situations. Although the absence of the late great Paul Walker can still be felt, all the characters bounce off well from each other. The stoic Dom acts as the no-nonsense leader, Tej and Roman’s comical banter has been expanded with the settling of Ramsey, Mia and Letty brings in the emotional stakes especially to Dom (alongside some solid badassery), and Han stayed true to his laid-back self. On a completely unrelated side note, Ramsey looks, talks, hacks, and drives like a playable character from Watch Dogs Legion.
On the flipside, F9’s absurd action scenes also brought out one of its biggest flaws: its lack of believability. Not in the sense that the sequences are way too over the top, but in the sense that it becomes inconsequential thanks to the film’s protagonists essentially being immortals, coming out of explosion after explosion almost completely unscathed. This caused the action set pieces to lack weight and emotional impact. It can take the audience away from the film, evidenced by the main crew’s complete disregard to collateral damage that’s only rivaled by the Avengers (which by now, they might as well be).
Of course, what would a Fast & Furious film be without the word ‘family’? Themes surrounding family served as F9’s dramatic anchor, where the film explored the antagonistic relationship between Dom and Jakob through slews of flashback sequences. These dramatic sequences also served as the film’s ‘down time’ in between the hailstorms of action while at the same time attempting to humanize Dom as a character.
Unfortunately however, these slower and more intimate moments become signposts of a formulaic and predictable story. While they somewhat succeeded in bringing the characters down to earth, they also unnecessarily drag out the plot in an attempt to gouge out emotional impact. They hurt the film’s pacing and drew out the question: is there a better way than this?
Regardless of the film’s flaws in terms of story and common sense, F9 delivered on what it set out to do: a ridiculously fun summer (or winter in Australia) popcorn blockbuster. It’s definitely worth a watch if you are willing to turn your brains off for the film’s 145-minute runtime. With the way things are going however, it is only a matter of time until the series turn into a space opera featuring intergalactic warfare akin to Star Wars.