World’s most beloved family is back in Fast X, the tenth (eleventh if you count Hobbs & Shaw) installment in the The Fast and the Furious franchise. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) finds, for the first time, that his family may be too big, as a character from his past returns and threatens to destroy the ones he loves. Dante (Jason Mamoa) is back for revenge–and the threats that have befallen this family in the past don’t compare. With death on the horizon, Dom will have to choose who lives and who dies.
How do you up the ante? How do you take a franchise that has played with the bounds of reality (even reached far past them) and create something even more fun and entertaining? And how do you take a film like this and incorporate emotion in a way that reaches your viewers? There’s no doubt that answering these questions was a challenge for Diesel, Writers Dan Mazeau, and Justin Lin, and Director Louis Leterrier–but they found a way to do all of the above.
Fast X begins with a flashback to Fast Five, when the family wreaked havoc on billionaire bad-guy Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), and the events of that film become the catalyst for all that plays out until the film’s conclusion. Nostalgia seems to be the technique most often used in cinema these days to appeal to viewers, and once again it becomes the way in which viewers are pulled right back into the franchise, right back into all that they love and cherish about it. Not a second is wasted in the opening sequence, and Fast X starts off with a bang–only to get bigger and better as it moves forward.
The film plays with our emotions from the opening seconds with the flashback from twelve years ago–and that emotion grows, becoming more and more prominent with every passing second. The The Fast and the Furious franchise has been known to bring back ghosts, to rarely kill off a character and truly leave them dead–but the stakes feel higher than ever as the franchise moves aggressively toward the finish line. It seems unlikely that if characters meet their demise in this installment that they will manage to find their way back before the blockbuster series concludes, and the risk of death is one that exists from beginning to end. Fast X sees characters like Han (Sung Kang), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and Jakob (John Cena) take the stage once more–and the thought of losing the characters that we love so dearly keeps viewers on the edges of their seats from beginning to end. Fast X builds on the relationships that viewers have forged with these characters in previous films, and it allows the film to feel like the biggest and most dangerous of the franchise to date.
All of the main characters are back, and a series of tertiary characters from before make an appearance throughout the course of Fast X as well. There are new faces present in the film, all of which play effectively with the others–but one individual steals the show like it were a safe in a Brazilian police station–and that’s Mamoa. I kept reading that Mamoa was a scene stealer, and that set my expectations high; he exceeded those expectations. The best parts of Fast X were the ones with Mamoa, as Dante’s larger-than-life, badass personality was ultimately what I began craving more of as the film progressed. Mamoa was hands down the best part of this film–quickly becoming one of the best (if not the best) villains in the history of the franchise.
Individuals who tend not to care for the The Fast and the Furious franchise often do so because of the wildly impossible stunts that exist throughout its entirety (and just the general implausibility of everything else about it as well). Fast X is incredibly self aware. While it refuses to change the way it plays out, the way in which it brings a story to life, it understands its (and all of the films before it) flaws. It pokes fun at itself, which adds a level of comedy and levity that often exists in the franchise–but what it also does is help to create a series of plot points that play a pivotal role in this film. The writers almost outdo themselves with Fast X as they turn their flaws into successes, as they use them to create aspects of this film that drive it forward and make it more enjoyable. The storytelling ability of this group is incredible, and I loved nearly every second of what they developed.
Fast X had to be bigger and better, the family had to grow, and it had to act as a way to lead viewers toward a conclusion for the entire franchise. All of these things come to be throughout the course of Fast X, but in a way that we haven’t before seen in the franchise. Sure, we see a lot of the same ploys that outsiders hate about the franchise, and the high-octane and explosive content remains nestled in the bosom of the film–but there’s something different about this one. It takes another step forward in the evolution of the The Fast and the Furious franchise, and becomes something beyond what I could have expected from the film as a whole. Everything I could have hoped for comes to be and more, and Fast X might just be the best thing the franchise has produced in a decade.
Directed by Louis Leterrier.
Written by Dan Mazeau, Justin Lin, & Gary Scott Thompson.
Starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Charlize Theron, John Cena, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren, Brie Larson, Scott Eastwood, Jason Mamoa, Alan Ritchson, Luis Da Silva Jr., Daniela Melchior, Leo Abelo Perry, Joaquim de Almeida, Rita Moreno, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
