Furious action abounds in an overstuffed Fast entree
Having lost its Rock, this now 20-year-old action franchise just decided to get more Ludacris. The end result is something of an oddity (and I’m not just talking about the scenes in space), a film that’s both more grounded and less dark than 2017’s Fate of the Furious, but also seems desperate to have something important to say.
Christian symbolism, the sins of the father, warring brothers and an obsession with ‘‘family’’ abounds. And for all the automotive and other sometimes, somewhat questionable ‘‘science’’ on display, ultimately, success comes down to the characters having faith.
Likewise, for a story that’s at pains to point out the importance about making peace with your past, the film-makers still flatly refuse to acknowledge that one of their major characters simply isn’t coming back (they even get him to babysit for virtually the entire movie here), as much as they’ve moved heaven and earth and manipulated earlier footage to resurrect others at least more than once.
As F9 opens, Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) have seemingly put their globetrotting days behind them. However, when other members of their team show up on their farm with an emergency transmission from Mr Nobody (Kurt Russell), Letty simply can’t resist joining them on a mad dash to his downed plane in Montequinto’s militarised zone.
Dom though is initially intransigent, that is until he spies a familiar-looking cross in the background of Nobody’s message.
What follows is a more than twohour visual and aural assault, with set-pieces ranging from a chase across a landmine-infested valley to an insane drive across a collapsing bridge and a rocket strapped to a Pontiac.
Upping the traditional ante, returning director Justin Lin (behind the wheel for the first time since 2013’s sixth instalment) crowbars in not one, but two McGuffins. There’s the potentially world order-changing Project Aries and a device that disappointingly repeatedly does the job of chewing the scenery, clearly in lieu of an absence of magnetic personalities among the supporting characters this time around.
At least Lin and new writer Daniel Casey, a man who has specialised in tales involving weapons of mysterious origins, aren’t afraid to call the crazier elements out.
‘‘We’re always on insane missions doing the damn-near impossible,’’ Tyrese Gibson’s Roman muses. ‘‘We’ve taken out cars, trains, trucks – not to mention that damn submarine – maybe it’s more than luck,’’ he adds, suggesting maybe they really are invincible.
Yes, having seen off the Expendables franchise and gone toe-to-toe with Bond, maybe rather than wrestle with Cruise control, Lin and company have set their sights on Marvel and the superhero movies.
It’s an argument that’s kind of hard to resist after the repeated sight of glass cells and metal being manipulated.
As it struggles to seamlessly shift narrative gears, this overlong, overstuffed and sometimes overwrought tale of two emotionally scarred siblings (John Cena filling the series’ former-prowrestler quota after a position was made vacant by Dwayne Johnson’s busy schedule) ultimately feels like a filler, an entree for the main course ( F10 has been mooted as the final instalment).
There’s just as much Toretto backstory as there is forward momentum (although it is great to see Kiwi Vinnie Bennett getting extended screen time as the young Dom). And, for all the nice diversity among the cast, the women are still sidelined, with Mia (Jordana Brewster) not only pretty much left out of The Torettos: The Teenage Years, but sidelined on a sub-mission with Letty to Japan.
As for Fate’s big bad, Cypher, she’s reduced to just a few lines and a snazzy haircut, a criminal waste of Charlize Theron, especially when her replacement is a Euro rent-a-villain (Thue Ersted Rasmussen) straight out 1990s action movie central casting.
As the high-octane, pyrotechnics-heavy blockbuster we’ve been waiting more than a year for, F9 essentially lives up to its onomatopoeic name.
However, unlike its increasingly impressive Impossible rival, this feels like a remodelling gone slightly awry.