FAST & FURIOUS 9

The brakes have been hit, but we’re still revved up.

DIRECTOR Justin Lin STARRING Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, John Cena, Charlize Theron ETA 22 May 2020 2 April 2021

When it comes to the tricky business of releasing films in a post-Corona world, the major studios have broadly followed two strategies: send films straight to streaming or delay till autumn/winter and hope everything’s hunky dory by then. Never a series to do things by half, Fast & Furious 9 has skidded back an entire year to 2021, the message clear: if Dom Toretto and fam won’t go home, they’re going big.

“It’s the biggest action I’ve ever seen. It’s on steroids,” chuckles Michelle Rodriguez, whose Letty Ortiz is the long-serving ride-or-die life partner of Diesel’s Dom. “When I sit back I think about how we’re ever going to top [it].” Fast-newcomer John Cena – revealed in the film’s first trailer as Dom’s long-lost brother Jakob – has a ‘poetic’ way of putting it: “You’re going to see some action that’s going to make you crap your pants.” Clearly, that 42-inch LED TV isn’t going to cut it.

Featuring magnet planes, triple truck flips, rocketpowered Pontiac Fieros and muscle cars rope-swinging across canyons, on the basis of its outrageous set-pieces alone, F9 demands the big-screen experience. But ever since returning director Justin Lin reignited the franchise with Fast Five, the series’ secret weapon is the melodrama to match the mechanical madness unfolding on screen.

F9 will be no different, pitting Dom against his own exiled brother, as well as Charlize Theron’s techno-terrorist Cipher, who’s returning to twist the knife after a narrow escape in Fast 8. Most shocking of all – Sung Kang’s Han Seoul-Oh is back from the dead and ready to dish up a long-overdue serving of justice. A year may seem like a long time, but if anyone’s worth waiting for it’s family.

GO BIG SCREEN Larger than life on every level, it’s the film cinema screens were made for.