One might have thought that going into space marked the apex of nuttiness for the Fast and the Furious franchise, but Fast X proves that, even Earth-bound, this series knows no limits when it comes to insane stunts, ridiculous plot twists, and cornball dialogue delivered with the straightest of faces. If you’re still on board for what these movies have to offer — and the global box office indicates that quite a few people are — Fast X deliriously overdelivers its delights.
We don’t have the stratosphere this time, but we do have Jason Momoa as Dante Reyes, a fabulously over-the-top villain who is as expressive and eager to play with constructs of gender as his nemesis Dominic Torreto (Vin Diesel) is monotone and tediously butch. Back in Fast Five, Dante’s father Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) was the target of that film’s big Rio bank-vault heist, and Dante has spent the last decade planning his revenge on the Fast family for killing his dad. “Never accept death when suffering is due,” was one of papa’s favorite aphorisms, and Dante (retrofitted into footage from Five) has clearly taken it to heart.
Dante’s complicated scheme involves framing Dominic and his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) as terrorists, along with their pals Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Han (Sung Kang). Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), the shadowy head of The Agency, the government body who recruited Dominic and company for global spy missions, is nowhere to be found, and over the protests of Nobody’s daughter Tess (Brie Larson), new Agency head Aimes (Alan Ritchson, “Reacher”) puts a global warrant out on all of our heroes.
The Fast and Furious movies have constantly added to their roster of characters with each new entry, so it’s no surprise that it’s going to take three movies to resolve this storyline, which also involves British criminals Queenie (Helen Mirren) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), Torreto siblings Mia (Jordana Brewster) and Jakob (John Cena), Dom’s son Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry), Dom’s grandmother (Rita Moreno), and various other friends, relatives, old flames, and hangers-on. Imagine a hybrid of Avengers: Endgame and Love Actually, and you’ll begin to wrap your head around the sprawl of Fast X.
Which is not to say that the movie doesn’t move at the briskest of clips, thanks to the herculean efforts of editors Dylan Highsmith and Kelly Matsumoto. Director Louis Leterrier (finally getting to play with the jumbo-sized box of crayons he earned for making 2002’s exhilaratingly unhinged The Transporter) handles the requisite globe-trotting and meanwhile-ing with flair, while screenwriters Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin jump through hoops trying to give all these characters one last moment to shine as they begin the wrap-up to this series. There’s even an effort to expand the range of these characters, which sometimes works — Brewster’s Mia gets to take out some soldiers in hand-to-hand combat — and sometimes doesn’t (Diesel attempts to express grief, anger, and other emotions).
Lest any of the location-jumping or booty-shorts drag racing feel excessively familiar, however, the insertion of Momoa goes a long way to rendering the proceedings fresh and unexpected. Dante is a sociopath with no other agenda than to rend asunder this franchise’s oft-repeated homilies about family — Aimes at one point refers to the extended Torreto clan as “a cult, with cars” — and Momoa makes this evildoer giddily high on his own malice. Whether this manic pixie nightmare boy is gay or merely playing around with rhetoric and nail polish to rattle the stolidly masculine Dom, Dante brings a much-needed blast of lavender to the Fast garage. (Literally, thanks to the array of flowy pastels the character serves in scene after scene, courtesy of costume designer Sanja Milkovic Hays.)
If you’re asking questions about logic or character motivations or physics, those are all concepts that got thrown out the window several exits back. But Leterrier and company understand that they have been freed of such constraints, offering up a live-action cartoon that doesn’t have to make rational or spatial sense as long as there’s emotion and excitement, two elements Fast X has by the tankful.
Director: Louis Leterrier
Screenwriters: Justin Lin and Dan Mizeau, based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson
Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood, Daniela Melchior, Alan Ritchson, Helen Mirren, Brie Larson, Rita Moreno, Jason Statham, Jason Momoa, Charlize Theron
Producers: Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel, Jeff Kirschenbaum, Samantha Vincent, Justin Lin
Executive producers: Joe Caracciolo Jr., David Cain, Amanda Lewis, Chris Morgan, Mark Bomback
Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon
Production design: Jan Roelfs
Costume design: Sanja Milkovic Hays
Editing: Dylan Highsmith, Kelly Matsumoto
Music: Brian Tyler
Sound: John Casali, production sound mixer; Tavish Grade, foley mixer
Production companies: Universal Pictures presents an Original Film/One Race Films/Perfect Storm production
In English
140 minutes
