Jason Momoa as Dante in “Fast X,” the latest “Fast and Furious” movie, directed by Louis Leterrier.Credit...Giulia Parmigiani/Universal Pictures
FAST X Movie Full details:Director
DirectorLouis LeterrierWritersDan Mazeau, Justin LinStarsVin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese GibsonRatingPG-13Running Time2h 21mGenresAction, Adventure, Crime, Mystery, Thriller
So much has gone super in these "Fast and Enraged" films — stunt work and destruction, clearly; but likewise genealogical records, racing, race, plots, pates, biceps, upper backs — that it was only after I saw what Jason Momoa was doing in this new installment, "Fast X," that I understood how much the acting had remained under the table. He plunges in to play an ostentatious psychological oppressor named Dante Reyes. Furthermore, it's unmistakable, from the desolate jokes he's been given and the light-loafer treatment he's going for, that the mustache Momoa's twirling isn't his. It's Tear Taylor's. For half a century, Taylor ran all over American TV in a hail of confetti that he threw for himself. He didn’t act. He made appearances. That’s how Momoa operates here, showing up wherever the movie needs him (on patio furniture, at the top of the Aldeadávila Dam) in lavender and snakeskin and billowing everything, horny to blow something up. These movies have been out of good ideas since “Furious 7” eight years ago, mired in government-flavored tug-of-wars over hacking, surveillance and tech. And Momoa’s here to zhuzh things up. So along with Taylor’s mustache, Momoa twirls himself. It’s like watching an overcup oak go trick-or-treating as a Christmas tree.
But, despite the fact that he annihilates the Spanish Strides of Rome with energetic promptness and murmurs lines like, "I can read your mind. What's more, yes: the rug matches the window hangings," it's not zhuzh-y enough. Momoa is giving the Joker. But Cesar Romero's. Obviously, he's the main individual here resolved to irrefutable lunacy, going for post-macho chill, refashioning the statement marks around him into neck pads.
Five movies and a dozen years ago, Dom (Vin Diesel) and the gang trashed favelas in Rio de Janeiro and killed Dante’s drug-lord father (along with scores of innocent Brazilians, but we’re not going there today). Now, with the series at the bottom of its barrel, Dante wants revenge. This means sending a giant bomb barreling toward the Vatican. He doesn’t quite pull that off, but his wish comes true to make wanted terrorists of Dom and the rest of the gang, creating a rift between them and the feds they covertly work for and spoiling the driving lessons Dom had been giving to his 8-year-old son, Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).
There are about five intersected plot lines, credited to Justin Lin and Dan Mazeau (the director Louis Leterrier replaces Lin as mayhem manager). Dom on the run; Dom’s brother, Jakob (John Cena), babysitting Brian (they’re on the run, too); some of Dom’s crew — Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Han (Sung Kang) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) — all but backpacking through Europe; Dom’s wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), arrested and locked up alongside the crew’s cyberterrorist nemesis, Cipher (Charlize Theron); and the two feds, Aimes (Alan Ritchson) and Tess (Brie Larson), at odds with each other over whether to aid or apprehend the “F&F” gang. And just about every strand stems from Dante’s pique and gets left as a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved until years from now in, what, “Fast X+1”?
All that I can say regarding this is all that it didn't exhaust me. But this is a series that, when its fourth and fifth installments showed up, had consolidated the original film's nonchalantly sexual, multiethnic, omni-racial vehicle culture with the "can't top that" set bits of Hollywood summer motion pictures. The fact that fusion was never boring fixes things such that much that. It had the excitement of newness. How frequently have I chuckled, in wonder, at how this series could manage a wide range of vehicles and individuals behind them. It insisted that a vast expanse of nonwhite people could meet the needs of blockbuster filmmaking regardless rake up cash around the globe. Also, it was exciting to see who they could enclose into that plan (Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell).
We’re talking about 22 years and nine sequels, though. Stacking the rotation with two former professional wrestlers, four Oscar winners (Rita Moreno gets jammed in here as Dom’s grandmother) plus Aquaman no longer feels like radical popular-culture inclusion. It feels both defensive and greedy: Can the Avengers top that? From an industrial standpoint, it does expose how much less gonzo our movies are now. What other franchise would’ve had the nerve to imagine Statham as Mirren’s son? To put Diesel in Moreno’s arms, Larson’s good graces and Theron’s cross hairs?
There’s a charitable, cash-free reason nobody wants these things to end. Despite Paul Walker’s having been dead for a decade, in these movies, his character, Brian O’Conner, is still alive, still married to Dom’s sister, still a dad, still living on a beach somewhere. The opening minutes of “Fast X” reimagine the death of Dante’s daddy in “Fast 5” and therefore grant the film an excuse to reanimate Walker. It just strains credulity that Brian would be sitting idle now while his homies face extinction. But that’s an implication of what these movies are asking us to believe, that his wife, Mia (Jordana Brewster), is more down for the defense of their family than he is. So letting this series go means letting Walker go, too. But that sentimentality leaves these movies with nowhere to go but up its own annals. (Well, there is Antarctica, the funniest of the datelines here.)
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Instead, we get some unacceptable kind of disorder. You can see it in the incoherence of the driving — and there's insufficient of that, either. And that implies wasting the series' lead entertainer and fire manager. These films used to understand what they had in Vin Diesel. Put him in the driver's seat of anything, and he's a star. The cameras in "Fast X" are excessively occupied to take in all the furrowing, the glints, the frowns really. He's a sorry spouse, darling, father or mastermind in these motion pictures, but give his foot a gas pedal and unexpectedly the man can act. His best minutes in "Fast X" involve that stuff at the Vatican. He appears to mean it that way. Dom's colossal crucifix is certainly not an adornment. It's a commitment. But later, while he's pulling two burned helicopter husks behind him, Diesel's absence of concern concerned me. The rush is no more.
It’s not there in the sequence in which that ball-bomb eats a chunk of Rome or any of the many, many shootouts and fistfights. Not even in the brawl Rodriguez and Theron endure that should have killed both of their characters. Visually, it’s as messy as a lot of the sequences in “Fast X.” It’s hard to care about a fight you can’t follow or be bothered to suspend disbelief for. That’s the true death knell for this series: rationalism, nit-picking, disillusionment. (Why can’t Brian come out and play?)
The series needn't bother with Momoa's vamping. The camp was continuously coming from inside the carport, the manner in which these motion pictures worked in disobedience of material science, sequence, account rationale and DNA. Their subject was criminals clashed about going genuine. Presently they're essentially an administration office, out protecting the planet — and they're such a long ways through the ethical looking glass that everyone looks excessively agreeable. There's an explanation the motion pictures' insistence on family begins to feel ludicrous. It causes us to feel like we're at Olive Nursery. Their imbecility made them significant. Presently, self righteousness has made them imbecilic. Characters are currently explaining these films to one another — and where extraordinary, huge, tanned Aimes is concerned, mansplaining them. They're saying stuff like, "It resembles a clique with vehicles," "The aftermath will be existential" and "This family has taken care of business to keep our own clean."
These movies used to know what about them was ridiculous. They’d give that to us until our hearts broke the speed limit. But I’ve already seen Diesel drive at a 90-degree angle before. The old bravado currently reeks of formula. The nerve is shot. There was a time when this series would have had Dante send a pair of balls hurtling toward the Vatican.