The word “family” is uttered 56 times in Fast X, number ten (there’s a clue in the title somewhere) in the series whose focus on interpersonal relations threatens to scupper it. And yet it keeps on going. The latest outing is not so fast, not so furious, maybe, but in a jimjams-and-pizza-and-beer kind of way, it’s a decent enough piece of entertainment – 1950s-melodrama acting with obsessively planned Buster Keaton-style stunts.
There is a plot, there really is, of a disavowed, Mission: Impossible flavour, with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and gang being accused of some dreadful atrocity and then being pursued by the Agency it used to work for. The atrocity – a bouncing bomb ricocheting through Rome – was actually the work of new villain Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), a man who’s been nursing a grudge ever since Toretto et al took down his father, Hernan (Joaquim de Almeida).
This takedown allows Fast X to revisit its own past with a rewind to the time of Fast Five, when Paul Walker was still alive, and illustrates one of the challenges of the franchise – how to get its many, many characters on screen in a meaningful way. This Fast X does not quite manage – five seconds of Helen Mirren, a few more of Jason Statham, Jordana Brewster largely ignored, the comedy double act of Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson underused, recent arrival Nathalie Emmanuel flapping about. John Cena gets a bit more to do, and as the uncle spiriting Dominic’s son to safety he also has an emotional resonance. But Sung Kang, Brie Larson, Scott Eastwood, Rita Moreno (!) – it’s largely a case of thanks for showing up and the chuck wagon is over there.
It is largely – operative word – Momoa’s show, the big man a bulk replacement for Dwayne Johnson, who has apparently settled his beef with Diesel and will return for the next (last?) instalment. Momoa is particularly good, a lot of fun, a camp villain of the old school not afraid to lisp his lines and be seen with his hair in bunches. A man can be safely in touch with his feminine side when he demonstrably has this much of a masculine side.
Momoa’s arrival means there’s no room for Charlize Theron’s big bad villain, Cipher. She’s in the film but largely neutralised.
Rome, London, Portugal, Rio, the action keeps moving and in Rio we get some actual street racing of the old F&F origins days, where girls in tiny shorts, gaudy cocktails, the smell of nitrous and youthful hormones mingle in a Proustian throwback which reminds us that we’re now 20-something years into this franchise and no one is getting any younger.
Louis Leterrier directs, having taken over from Justin Lin after some disagreement about “direction”, and while no one is really as good an action director as Lin, Leterrier is good enough for the stuntery to be thrilling, fun, propulsive and easy to follow.
It’s the fully loaded experience. All the toppings plus extra cheese. Whole swathes of plot could be removed and it would still work. You could take ten characters out and it would also still bounce along.
The Fast and Furious franchise has, like the cars in it, gone from being a sleek street-racer vehicle to one with all the bells and whistles plus neon underglow. If austerity and authenticity is your thing, it’s probably best avoided. But if there is a space in your heart for Vin Diesel growling subsonically through one more series of preposterous, death-defying (and frankly rather cool) stunts, there is room for this in your life.
But keep a space for the eleventh film, due 2025, and the twelfth, plus various spin-offs, including (as I write) the “untitled female-led spin-off”. It would appear there is still gas in the tank.
Fast X – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
