I want to start by saying I’ve long been a fan of the Fast and Furious series. I came by it early on and loved the early interplay between Brian and Dom. I felt they worked hard to keep the memory of the actor and the character alive throughout. Vin Diesel believes in that kind of thing. Heck, he named his real daughter Pauline after Paul Walker. Is Diesel a good dude? I don’t know. Does he make good films? No. Does he make fun films. Usually. Is this one of them? Kind of, at least for a little while.
Fast 9 suffers from the bigger and better syndrome that impacts all blockbuster sequels. You can’t go small again… at least in theory. The promise and premise of 9 was a trip back to the roots of the franchise and we do get all of that raw early F1-esque storytelling through a series of extended flashbacks that introduce Dom’s brother, played by John Cena. Here is where we start to run into serious problems. For whatever reason, Cena is hard to take seriously as a tough guy. Maybe its the way he moves, or his comedic film history or the wrestling past. I don’t know what it is about the actor, but he’s not the guy who makes anyone say, yeah, he’s a tough guy bad ass. To quote a line directed at him in Trainwreck, “You not about that life.”
I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe anything. My willing suspension of disbelief, key to any film enjoyment and key to staying locked into the story, vanished in the first 10 minutes. I mean entirely gone gone gone. Want a car that goes the distance in under 10? F9 is where to find it. Want a plot that falls apart in under 10? Same place.
All that being said, there is a great deal of fan service throughout, most of which seems to have been boiled up from the deepest fantasies of writer and director Justin Lin, whose character Han, was in his first film A Better Tomorrow, and continues through this film, defying death.
Go watch it on the big screen if you are in the market for big senseless action scenes that defy logic. Or, wait for the Bond movie. At least that will have those scenes in a ‘making sense’ variety.