Flasz On Film

The Fast & Furious franchise is now one of the longest running film series with a (more or less) uninterrupted narrative progression and perhaps one of the most interesting ones to dissect as a scientific specimen. It effectively started with a superficially innocuous Point Break remake, led a short life as a street-racing curiosity for gear-heads and eventually transmogrified into a hybrid perched somewhere between Ocean’s Eleven, The Dirty Dozen and Mission: Impossible, while entertaining masses and leaving everyone else scratching their heads as to what the secret to its longevity truly is. Is it the persistence in pumping out new instalments with little regard to whether it is appropriate to do so? Is it its dorky self-awareness? Is it the sheer scale of its spectacular aspirations that – as the movies progressed – led its principals to play with car-sized electromagnets, drag bank vaults across the streets of Rio de Janeiro, take off from world’s longest runways, battle nuclear submarines and even go to outer space? Is it… Dominic Toretto’s Family™ fetish? Or is it the delicate balance between of all those factors – a secret spice mix, if you will – that’s responsible for why these movies continue to make bank and defend their position against the now seemingly unstoppable horde of spandexified shared universes?  

Maybe. Problem is, Fast X may be an indication that the Fast & Furious franchise – a supercharged and kitted out drag strip behemoth that it is – may be finally running out of road as the series creators are clearly out of ideas. 

One pet theory I have been nursing ever since I decided to catch up with these movies (and I must admit that I had to go back to the very beginning because I only remembered seeing the first one before) is that the odd entries tend to be a tad stronger than the even ones. I can’t precisely pinpoint why but Fast 5, Furious 7, the original The Fast and the Furious and even F9 tend to average out better than the second, sixth and eighth instalments in this series; the only exception seems to be the fourth movie which reinvents the franchise. Perhaps it seems to follow that the odd movies all tend to lean more heavily toward the operatic aspects of the saga, while the even ones veer more toward self-parody and bombastic ridiculousness, but correlation is not causation, so I don’t think there are any underlying patterns to the narrative and tonal flows of the series.  

However, Fast X is the tenth movie in the series. And ten is an even number. So, I sat down to watch this subconsciously thinking whether it will confirm that pet theory of mine or if Louis Leterrier, who replaced Justin Lin at the helm of this movie, would come to defy my inadvertent expectations I actively tried to suppress in an attempt to remain unbiased in my reception of what this movie would have in store for me.

And it looks to me as though people who made this movie were also aware of my pet theory, even though I haven’t shared it with anyone up to now, because Fast X is a movie that clearly and desperately tries to work to undermine it and it fails miserably in doing so. We begin with the story flashing back to Fast 5, arguably the best movie in the series, where we are reminded of that daring heist sequence where Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) dragged a vault across the streets of Rio. Which is where we also find out that this entire movie (or as it turns out, this movie and its upcoming follow-up) will see the growing Toretto Family™ – yes, John Cena’s Jacob Toretto joins the ranks of successfully converted villains like Deckard Shaw, Luke Hobbs and others – face against a foe who has a score to settle. Enter Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes, a psychotic son of the main villain of Fast 5 played there by Joaquim De Almeida, who effectively overshadows the entire cast with his bravura and untethered command of the screen clearly designed to work within the parameters of a comic book villain.  

One thing leads to another and – as expected – the Toretto Family™ find themselves on the most wanted list as they are blamed for a massive explosion in Rome, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) ends up captured by The Agency and must be helped by Mr Nobody’s daughter Tess (Brie Larson), all the While Jacob is helping Dom’s kid to safety and while Dom together with the rest of the gang try to find out how to stop Dante “Joker from Wish” Reyes from taking over the world and wiping out the Toretto Bloodline™.  

Exactly, you read it correctly. None of this makes logical sense to anyone, nor should it, because after all, it is the tenth instalment in a series of action movies where people switch cars mid-air, drive rocket-propelled muscle cars into satellites in orbit and where nobody ever stays dead for longer than few movies. In fact, even in the wake of the tragic death of Paul Walker, the filmmakers decided – which, in hindsight, may have been a massive mistake – to keep his character alive and go on pretending as though he was always busy elsewhere, which at this point in the series just looks inappropriate. So, to put it bluntly, Fast X is a glorified steaming mess that struggles with its own identity to such an extent that watching this movie feels like being trapped at a family function where someone snaps and decides to have a marital row in front of the extended family and whoever else came to visit. It’s embarrassing to watch.  

Look, I don’t mind stupid films. In fact, I actively cherish the kind of stunt-based moviemaking that continues to be in short supply these days, especially during the summer months when the only other blockbusters in attendance continue to drape themselves in spandex. Problem is, Fast X seems to have become a sentient being and in its sudden awakening realized it wanted to buck its own patterns of behaviour. Therefore, the movie insists on leaning towards the Toretto Family™ opera and at the same time wants to be a self-aware hip and bombastically decadent parody of a Mission: Impossible movie chockfull of street races, speed-ramped establishing shots, and everything else you’d come to expect from a Fast & Furious film. 

However, it is incredibly difficult to successfully ride the line between earnest and ridiculous, although in fairness, it is not entirely impossible. What is easier – and this is what this series has been dealing with already anyway – is to commit to either of the two options instead. And at least from where I am sitting, whenever they lean more heavily on the operatic earnestness of the Toretto Family™, the movies come out stronger in the process. This is why Fast 5, Furious 7, Fast & Furious (the fourth movie, for clarity), and even F9 work much better than the other entries. They commit to the character drama underpinning the preposterousness of the spectacle, thus convincing me, the viewer, to take this nonsense seriously as well.  

Unfortunately, it just goes to show that Fast X perhaps came together in an atmosphere of chaos because the story doesn’t really know if it wants to be serious about the stakes it is raising, or if it wants to be its own jester. By trying to play both sides at the same time the movie relinquishes all credibility as either and looks like a piece of insufferable genre filmmaking you’d find in a fake movie found within the narrative of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It’s too tonally incongruent to make me believe anything that happens in the movie and equally, the operatic drama is what stops me from laughing with the movie as a self-parody. I can only laugh at the movie. 

In essence, Fast X is not only a failure, but also a grave indication that the series has long outgrown its usefulness. Dom Toretto may live a quarter mile at a time, but it sure isn’t a good enough philosophy to run a long-standing franchise with. Whichever way you slice it, this movie is an embarrassment that lacks direction and conviction to pursue it for more than ten seconds at a time, especially when it looks as though it has dramatic ambitions that it could live up to, if it so wished. However, it is not enough to let Jason Momoa loose on the set and tell him to be a wild Batman villain who has got his costumes in the wash, just as it is not enough to have John Cena wear crocs for an hour before staging his dramatic sacrifice, all in preparation for Vin Diesel to distract you with a set of daring stunts. I’m sorry to say that but this franchise is out of gas and Fast X is nothing but a puddle of embarrassing bin juice that doesn’t rivet with its signature preposterousness, nor does it even attempt to successfully endear with its opera, or cheer up with its comedy. This series needs a Family™ intervention.