I saw the original The Fast and the Furious back around the time it first hit home video and, to put it bluntly, I didn’t like it very much. It was a bit dull, none of the actors impressed me all that much, especially Vin Diesel, and if I had stopped to think about it, I might have noticed it was a Point Break rip-off with driving replacing surfing and skydiving. But then, somehow, the series metamorphed into something else, a series where cars did impossible things and the low level electronics thieves somehow became indestructible superspies. I did, with a pair of friends, catch up later and actually found the series fun. Mindless fun, but still fun.
That said, I have no defense for the title of this ninth movie, especially since it seems to have two or three alternate versions.
After a flashback to death of Dom Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) father, we cut to the present, and there’s a problem: Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell)’s plane was shot down while transporting arch criminal known for her bad haircuts Cipher (Charleze Theron) somewhere, and the downed craft also had something else on board of value. He sent the message only to Dom’s extended family, and they try to get Dom and his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) to come investigate it in some fictional Central American country. Though Dom initially declines to go because he has a young son now, he changes his mind upon reinspecting the remains of the footage Nobody sent. He has a good reason to: the man who took down Nobody’s plane and spirited Cipher away is Dom’s estranged younger brother Jakob (John Cena), and like all Fast and Furious movies it becomes about, well, family.
Also, there are a lot of car stunts, fight scenes, and monosyllabic grunts from the series star and numerous return appearances from past cast members. Honestly, in this series, the only character guaranteed to never return for an on-screen appearance is Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner due to Walker’s death. We’ll just be given a line or two explaining where he is even as his wife, Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) likewise returns. If someone had a significant role in a Fast and Furious, they can always return no matter what they did before.
If anything, this was perhaps the most self-conscious of the movies. It does, for example, seem unlikely that Diesel, Brewster, and Cena all came from the same parents, but the movie at least makes a note of that. Likewise, the way the characters somehow survive impossible stunts without a scratch is something of a minor subplot/reoccurring conversation. Cipher, who spent the previous movie spouting bad philosophy, here spends a lot of time observing movie tropes. It’s like the movie knows how dumb all this stuff is.
Seriously, my personal head cannon is Dom died in the opening stunt chase in Fast Five, and we’ve been following him in the afterlife ever since. That is the movie where this series basically decided it didn’t need realism in any way, shape, or form. These movies work best when they act like some sort of cartoon show where the laws of physics are a somewhat inconvenient obstacle at best.
Make no mistake: these are dumb movies. However, they are also at their best when they basically play to the dumb. The worst things any Fast and Furious movies tries to do is act like there’s something intelligent going on onscreen. These are dumb popcorn movies in their purest form, movies where you should just shut your brain off and watch a cat vault a ravine, crash, and have the passengers climb out without a scratch and possibly without any sign they were even wearing a seat belt. Returning director Justin Lin gets that and sets things along accordingly. Diesel has publicly stated the next movie will be the last in this series, and the way these movies keep topping themselves for ridiculous scenarios involving cars, well, I look forward to seeing how something like this even ends. For this one, don’t think about it too hard and it should be a lot of fun.
Grade: B
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