Formula: The Fate of the Furious ^ The Fast and the Furious
The Fast and Furious saga is about as "critic-proof" as it gets. It's a franchise with a dizzying mythology, no patience for plausibility, mostly second-tier stars, and more concern with being globally marketable than matching domestic tastes. The franchise made that fateful pivot with the fourth movie and, ever since, the sensibility of the movies has been "get on for the ride or get out of the way". In other words, it's hard to say anything thoughtful of value about the movie. I'm going to try though.
Let's try a new approach. Does this movie offer what I bought my ticket for? It's got globetrotting. I counted at least 7 location cards in the movie all over the world. It features all the characters I've come to expect, including a few glorified cameos that reward long-term memory of the franchise. The action is big. They literally go to space, which is often the sign that a franchise has run out of ideas. Armored cars flip. They use a broken bridge as a sort of slingshot for a car. There's a scene where they attempt to drive too fast for a minefield. Perhaps the biggest star of the movie is magnets, which director Justin Lin, returning for the first time since F6, falls in love with. Basically, if you are going to see a Fast and Furious movie, F9 has everything you signed up for.
I can try to describe the plot, although it's pretty nonsensical and pretty involved for someone who has only seen each movie once. So, Dominic (Vin Diesel) has a brother, Jakob (John Cena), who happens to be the world's premiere assassin/driver/thief. Don't worry about why they never mentioned him before. Anyway, Jakob steals something that would destroy the world or something and the Furious crew are called in to stop him. Charlize Theron's Cipher is still around, making trouble. There are a lot of flashbacks in the film to Dom and Jakob's early days before they had a falling out. I don't know that I needed that backstory, but someone might care about it.
You can assume every character who is still alive and one we thought was dead is back. The only notable absence is The Rock*, I assume due to clashing egos with Diesel. Anyway, John Cena steps in for what I'm sure will be a similar multi-film role. I do worry that we're reaching critical mass for star power in the movies though. The Rock and Jason Statham are missing. Paul Walker died several movies ago. They didn't retain Gal Gadot to use her Wonder Woman fame. How many people in this cast would be anything without this franchise right now? Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris don't have anything else going on. Same with Jordana Brewster and Sung Kang. Nathalie Emmanuel could certainly turn into a bigger star at some point, I suppose. Vin Diesel does voice a Marvel character, but the main reason he isn't playing villains and character roles now is these movies. I like John Cena a surprising amount, but he's still a poor-man's Dwayne Johnson at the box office. Honestly, the only two people who would be in about the same place anyway are Michelle Rodriguez, who pops up in a lot of places, and Charlize Theron who is really doing this franchise a favor by hamming it up here rather than virtually any other franchise.
*He has graduated to Dwayne Johnson at this point, but let's face it. When he's in these movies, he's The Rock.
Along the star power lines, this is the first time I remember the franchise feeling old. Perhaps it's all the flashbacks reminding me how long ago the first movie was. Maybe it's seeing Lil Bow Wow showing up in his mid-30s. Rather than bringing in new blood, this movie brings back a lot of old characters. It seems clear to me that this movie is more about winding the series down than seeing how it could continue.
I can't say this featured any of my favorite action sequences in the series. The train in Fast Five and the plane in F6 are still my favorites. The physics in F9 get just a little too crazy for me. The same bridge is used for 2 different gravity defying escapes. The armored truck stuff is cool. I like the idea of the magnets, but that was mostly used as a chaos agent. I rarely had a sense of where the pull or source of the magnetism was coming from. Sometimes the magnets were in the side of the cars. Other times, it's like they transferred the magnetism to the car following them.
F9 is a perfectly fine entry in the franchise. It raises some questions about the long-term viability of it, which is reasonable for a series 9-movies deep. As the unofficial return of blockbuster films, I don't think it was worth the wait, but I doubt anything would've been.
Side Thought: A running gag in this movie is Roman thinking that he might be invincible. I really don't know how I feel about this. It's funny and a nice acknowledgment that the filmmakers are aware of how insane all this is. However, doesn't it fundamentally change the stakes of the series? I mean, Brian is still alive in the series. Han just came back. Death is not the end in the franchise and characters are aware that they are getting away with things that no human should. The illusion of stakes is what keeps action movies honest. The idea that they have to explain how a character survives forces the filmmakers to think through how an action sequence will work. If there's the understanding that every bullet will miss, the car will always roll onto its tires, and the heroic sacrifice will always be bailed out, then what's stopping the filmmakers from giving into their critics and really be about blowing things up haphazardly?
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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