Rating of
2.5/4
Just Call It the Fast and Ridiculous Already
Chris Kavan - wrote on 06/30/21
At one point in the movie, Roman (played by Tyrese Gibson) makes a pointed speech about no matter what seems to happen to the characters, they never die. You mean you think you're invincible says Tej (Ludacris) before busting out laughing and saying what a jackass he is... but this is where we are now. The series itself is invincible and it has the box office clout to prove it - and no matter how insane or ridiculous things get, I'm also along for this ride - I may not be family, but I will support it to the end.
F9 starts with some family history - as we see Toretto racing family back in the 80s, a young dom, his race-car driving father and his previously never-mentioned young brother, Jakob. While there have been references to this in the past - nothing like dropping a random family member into the audience's lap. If that wasn't enough, it seems the reason we've never heard of said brother is because Dom blames him for his father's death and essentially cuts him out of the family - and apparently the rest of the Fast franchise. But, many a year later, Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) has his plane go down and he's carrying the one and only Cipher (Charlize Theron, badass, even in a little-more-than cameo role) along with a potential world-ending device (or at least half of it). While Dom wants a nice family life - Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is more than willing to help the crew - Roman, Tej and tech wizard Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) with the mission. Dom looks like he wants to back down for once... until he realizes his young brother is involved. This also allows us to reintroduce Mia (Jordana Brewster) back into the fold, after her absence since Fast 7 - family is forever after all.
John Cena shows up as said young brother, working with the son of dictator Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen) to gain control of our MacGuffin - sorry, world-altering device - and he seems to have nigh-unlimited funding to do so (I mean, he plucks his car out of the sky with a stealth bomber and super magnets). And that's not the most ridiculous stunt of this opening action sequence in which we see many cars (and one motorcycle) not-so-deftly cross a minefield, a very heavy car miraculously drive across a crumbling wooden bridge and another slingshot across said bridge-less chasm by a flimsy rope attached around its wheel. Don't worry - if you like that, there's much more to come!
In any case, our group realizes that our device has two halves and needs a hidden key to operate and thus we split up our merry band into three groups - Dom heads to London to track down his brother, Roman and Tej head out to get geared up while Letty and Mia head to Tokyo to track down another clue. This allows us to catch up with a lot of old friends - Dom runs into Queenie (Helen Mirren) for a short, fun little aside, Roman and Tej meet back up with Sean and Twinkie (Lucas Black and Shad Moss - both from Tokyo Drift), now shooting off rocket cars for fun and uh profit? but the biggest reveal comes in Tokyo where we see an old face, long though dead SPOILERS - but you should probably already know this, it's Han (Sung Kang) and we find out our missing key is not a thing but a who - Elle (Anna Sawai) whose DNA is literally the key to starting up the device.
All this leads to a grand finale involving shooting a car into space (no really) and stopping the heaviest vehicle in the history of film (hint - it involves those magical magnets!). If you think that sounds crazy, you need to see it to believe it - just when you think things can't get any crazier - they do.
But, hey, you don't go into a Fast movie these days looking for deep plot and characters, you go into it looking for a good time and at least a few scenes of women dancing slowly (yes, they're still here too). It's not going to win awards or accolades and might not even earn much respect, but it's damn good fun and for a summer after all the crap we've had to go to, I'm glad it's the first film I've seen in a theater in over a year. Bravo and bring on the next crazy adventure my friends, because I'm not leaving this ride yet.
