Middle of the road
LATEST FAST & FURIOUS FLICK FAILS TO HIT TOP GEAR DESPITE BOLDLY GOING WHERE THEY’VE NEVER GONE BEFORE
ACTOR and professional wrestler John Cena brings some fresh blood to the high-speed Fast & Furious franchise.
As the younger brother of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), he is a master assassin with an axe to grind, preferably against the forehead of his older sibling.
Director Justin Lin slides back into the driver’s seat of the penultimate film in the series, co-written by Daniel Casey.
The perfunctory plot begins with covert ops team leader Mr Nobody (Kurt Russell) capturing cyberterrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron) but his plane is shot down over Montequinto.
Dom, wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and the team – Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) – head to the Central American jungle to investigate.
Following a daredevil escape from a minefield, they come face to face with Dom’s younger brother Jakob (Cena), who joins forces with Cipher to bring down Dom and the gang.
The script quickly disables the handbrake on plausibility and makes no effort to slalom around gaping p(l)otholes, introducing giant electromagnets for one elaborate set piece that reduces Edinburgh city centre to rubble.
Characters spend more time discussing their apparent invincibility than enriching emotional arcs or making sense of a preposterous quest to retrieve top-secret technology which seizes control of global weapons systems.
Once it becomes clear that the racers can survive anything, and know it, Fast & Furious 9 jettisons dramatic tension from its exhaust pipe and screeches through a series of bombastic smash ‘n’ grabs that venture to the only place untouched thus far.
“Two dudes from the ghetto in outer space? You know nobody’s gonna believe this right?” grins Gibson to Bridges. We don’t.
Lin’s picture isn’t a complete car crash but air bags are repeatedly deployed. Dame Helen Mirren has fun returning for a cameo as the London master criminal Queenie. Fast & Furious 9 shifts through first and second gears but never achieves top speed.