In the great game of Fast & Furious bingo, Fast X hits a full house about 23 minutes into its extensive two-hours-plus run time. A suburban barbecue? Check. Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris tomfoolery? Check. Ret-conning? Check. Product placement? Check. Vin Diesel talking about family? Check, check, check to the power of 10.
Having previously squandered two Oscar-winning women – Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron, both returning for new career lows – Fast X adds Rita Moreno and Brie Larson to the bloated cast. The latter, essaying the supersecret-agent daughter of the supersecret-agent Mr Nobody, mostly sounds as if she’s advertising a distasteful teleshopping product.
Early in the film Mr Nobody’s replacement, a fade haircut and a suit essayed by Alan Ritchson, notes that various cops, villains and adversaries have, over the course of the franchise, fallen under the spell of Diesel’s Dominic Toretto. It’s like a cult, he says.
Thus Fast X marks the return of Theron’s Cypher, the latest soup-taker to show up on Toretto’s doorstep with a spiel about “my enemy’s enemy”.
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Enter Jason Mamoa, the newest Dominic nemesis, replete with daddy issues, nail varnish, campy one-liners and purple threads. Watch out, gang! He’s genderfluid!
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It’s unfortunate that the gritty street races that once defined the Fast sequence have given way to green screen, CGI and unintelligible fast cuts, as Louis Leterrier can still ramp up the adrenaline. The welcome silliness of Fast & Furious 9′s space sequence continues apace with various set pieces in which cars fly, explode, or – wait for it – play snooker with a wrecking ball on the outskirts of Vatican City.
Keeping up with the many, many characters and their peccadillos is dizzying
One almost wishes they’d go for broke and feature a car making a Michelin-starred meal, but as this is (apparently) the first of a trilogy, we still have time for bergamot parfait by Dodge Charger.
Keeping up with the many, many characters and their peccadillos is dizzying. Remember that Han has a thing for snacks? Anyone? It’s like Cecil B DeMille’s casts of thousands if everyone had a speaking part. Even the dead characters don’t have the good grace to stay quiet. Or dead.
Fast X opens on Friday, May 19th
