F9: The Fast Saga (2021)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
With a massive worldwide box office take, prior to its massive North American opening, F9: The Fast Saga is clearly the movie of the moment.
Many will flock to F9 to see what brazen and insane stunts and action the filmmakers can create this time around.
You love, or at least have great interest with these films and are a loyalist when it comes to Fast & Furious
NO
You deserve better. We all do.
For an already increasingly absurd and ludicrous series of movies, F9 reaches for a self-aware, nod-and-wink approach to itself that makes it all the more insufferable and untenable.
There is no attention to detail, no honesty in its attempts at emotional connection, and John Cena is badly miscast and Vin Diesel barely awake through the entire film. Was that extra butter on your popcorn?
OUR REVIEW
When a movie opens with $70 million in ticket sales as we begin to emerge from quarantine during a global pandemic, does a review or critique really matter? One could argue that movies like F9: The Fast Saga have always been critic-proof, meaning negative or positive reviews come secondary to the general public’s interest in a project. When you also add in the fact that F9 has already earned more than $400 million worldwide, the ninth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise (and 10th F&F-related film overall) is seemingly just what people needed in emerging from a global pandemic and attempting to comfortably escape back into the theater and fall in love with movies once again.
All the more a shame then that F9 is such a terrible movie; so caught up in its own universe of nonsense and false sincerity that we will just collectively swallow what it serves to us like I did with a box of movie-size Whoppers and a medium Coke.
Even if you enjoy F9 in the moment and have a huge stomach ache afterwards (blame the movie, never the concessions), what was it all for? A fleeting moment of “Whoa!” and a secondary moment of rolling your eyes and letting out a chortle or yell-laugh at the absurdity spooling out before you?
F9 believes that you truly care about the mythology it has piled upon its viewers for 20 years, with a clear-cut recall of everything that has gone down with the Torretto family and its adjacent second family of death-defying mechanics, reformed thieves, computer hackers, and street racers.
Having watched all ten of these Fast & Furious movies now, I barely remember any of them. Sure, a stunt here or there comes to mind. And this time around, the stunt work is off-the-rails insane and as silly as it is fascinating to experience. I can recall Dwayne Johnson reinvigorating a franchise that had almost squealed off into the sunset. His on-screen and off-screen rivalry with Vin Diesel was kind of fun. Diesel’s here of course (more on him in a moment), but we switch out one former WWE Champion for another, as John Cena joins the cast as Diesel’s grown up, tantrum-throwing, mankind-threatening estranged brother Jakob.
Part nostalgia-piece, part newfound absurdity, you can be forgiven if characters and nods and winks to subplots of the past pass you right on by. Director Justin Lin returns to the director’s chair for the first time since 2013 and along with co-screenwriter Daniel Casey, uses F9 as a call back to several Fast & Furious films from the past, with cameos and surprise appearances. For all you Furious-heads out there, this is like a greatest hits/reunion tour all wrapped up into one. Plus Cardi B!
Lin and Casey have opted for this episode to be a self-aware/referential comedy/action film as unfunny as it is cringeworthy. Diesel’s Dom reconvenes his makeshift team to try and save all of humanity from someone who has stolen Ares, a device which can hack into any computer system in the world. Jakob is the culprit, and he wants to use the device to control weaponry around the globe and become the most powerful man/force/dictator/Jakob he can truly be.
Much of this is framed in flashback, c. 1989. A young Dom (Vinnie Bennett) is a crew chief for his father’s racing team, with younger brother Jakob (Finn Cole) also assisting and helping out. When an altercation with another driver leads to Dom’s dad dying in a fiery crash, the brothers become estranged and then face off in (and I kid you not wrestling fans…) a loser-leaves-town street race. Dom wins and Jakob leaves the territory.
Jakob will go to prove, as a classic Tears for Fears song once foretold, that everybody truly does want to rule the world. Lin and Casey’s clever idea on just how incorporates electromagnets into the film’s arsenal of clever gadgetry and trickery. Dom’s team seize them from some bad folks connected to Jakob and equip a half-dozen or so vehicles with them, adding twisty little knobs that can activate and deactivate their power at will. One crazy chase scene sees characters turning them on and off, weaponizing them at will. I guess the visual shock-and-awe of cars being flung at a magnetized vehicle was too good to resist. But, I mean, magnets?
Is this where I mention that high above the Scottish skyline, with magnet madness unfolding below, Cena is just ziplining across Edinburgh? Like across nearly the whole city? And no one on the ground notices at all?
Since details are often important, and the film relies on them to a certain degree, let’s call out the fact that F9 doesn’t really care about them whatsoever. As grown teenagers, Jakob is about 3-4 inches shorter than Dom, but as adults they are basically the same height. Young Jakob has a noticeable mole on his forehead, which old Jakob does not. Also, the younger sister of Dom and Jakob, Mia (a returning Jordana Brewster), is apparently 16 at the time of their father’s death.
Simple math indicates that Mia would now be 47-48 years of age and Dom and Jakob would have to be in their early 50’s. Diesel’s 53, Cena’s 44, and Brewster’s 41. While it is nice to see a movie age characters upwards for once, instead of making them play younger, did they really intend to make Cena and Diesel in their early 50s? Really?!
It’s little things like this that stand out when a movie is so dead set on being as rambunctious, bloated, and pointless as this one. F9 thinks it is funny to have a character talk about all the times they should have been killed but hasn’t been. F9 thinks it’s super hilarious to have two computer hackers float up into the earth’s orbit and somehow behave as fully-trained astronauts, floating around in space.
For 145 interminable minutes, this exercise in patience and regulating your Coke intake becomes insulting. When nothing makes sense, willingly, why do we care? If ever a director was cashing in paychecks, it is Justin Lin. I can’t say I blame him necessarily, but I mean - come on man, care a little bit?
Which finally leaves us with Diesel’s “performance.” Looking completely zoned out on a healthy dose of antihistamines and/or painkillers, Diesel’s inability to generate any emotion whatsoever and grumble and mumble his lines is about as bad and lazy as ever. His lack of emotion makes his countless, gift-shop framed quotations about family meaning forever, and never forgetting where you came from, meaningless and laughable.
And perhaps most insulting of all? One character returns from presumed death in the same movie where the late Paul Walker’s character, Brian, is treated as alive and well. So what was the point of “See You Again” then?
Shame on all involved. F9 may be printing money right now, but the fact remains this is as soulless and disingenuous a movie as you will find in this or any year.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, John Cena, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Vinnie Bennett, Finn Cole, Sung Kang, Michael Rooker, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell, Charlize Theron, Lucas Black, Shad Moss, Jon Tobin, Don Omar, Shea Whigham, Anna Sawai, Thue Erstad Rasmussen, Jim Parrack, Cardi B.
Director: Justin Lin
Written by: Daniel Casey, Justin Lin (screenplay); Justin Lin, Alfredo Botello, Daniel Casey (story)
Based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson
Release Date: June 25, 2021
Universal Pictures