If you have been watching the Fast and Furious movies for the last two decades, you have already bought into the ridiculousness and turn-your-brain-off entertainment built into the franchise’s DNA. F9 is not only more of the same, it acknowledges its cheesiness and then takes it to another level. However, it’s not quite as thrilling as the better films in the franchise, and it suffers from the absence of cast members like Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham.
Dom (Vin Diesel) is drawn into the espionage game again as the gang tries to find two pieces of a device that can take down anything connected to a network. Working against him is his younger brother, Jakob (John Cena) who also happens to be a spy and is working with the son of an oligarch, Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen). This search takes Dom and his crew across the world and, of course, there are plenty of car related shenanigans.
Series veteran Justin Lin is back to direct, and his influence is immediately apparent in the polished action set pieces, which are a welcome change from the oversaturated CGI in Fate of the Furious. Lin also gets to play off diverse backdrops, varying from a jungle to neon-lit Tokyo streets and the dense locales of London.
As mentioned before, the action is as over the top as ever. One standout moment featured prominently in the trailer is Dom jumping a cliff with his charger and using a rope from a destroyed rope bridge to do a bungee jump and swing onto another island. Then there’s the meme-made-reality of Tej(Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) going to space. The banter between the duo is still lively, now alluding to the fact that the crew has survived lots of impossible situations. Then there’s the magnet sequence, or should I say, sequences. The final action scene is a combination of the heist from Fast Five and the aforementioned magnets. It’s still convoluted, but you buy into it, especially if you’re watching this in a theater.
As entertaining as it is, F9 doesn’t quite pull off the drama it tries to build between Dom and Jakob.
It feels forced, and although Cena dives into this role with as many scowls as he can muster, the starpower and energy of the Rock is sorely missed here. Jakob is probably going to be an important part of the story going forward, but it feels like a late adjustment to a series that hasn’t quite found its way after the loss of Paul Walker. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention how a previously dead series regular comes back and then doesn’t have much of anything to do throughout the rest of the film.
What’s most damning about F9, however, is that ‘the family’ doesn’t really feel like one in the movie. Dom doesn’t really react to the presence of anyone other than Letty, and it seems like he hasn’t even met Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) before this film.
F9 is still entertaining, of course, but it feels like the series is running out of steam. Let’s hope it can continue to hold its course until the franchise’s supposed finale with the eleventh installment.