Despite his popular presence in this series’ previous five entries, I note that Dwayne Johnson chose not return for this one.
Smart move.
And despite the otherwise welcome return of director Justin Lin — who helmed installments three through six — this newest Fast & Furious entry is yet another example of dumb, tedious, wretched excess (as also was the case with 2019’s Hobbs & Shaw). The idiotic script cobbled together by Lin and his co-writers — Daniel Casey and Alfredo Botello — overwhelms its one smart move with an increasingly ridiculous series of action sequences.
No matter how much absurd punishment his car takes, Dom (Vin Diesel) always
manages to retain control. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) counts on it.
The smart move: Granting main man Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) a race track-hued origin story involving his tempestuous relationship with a hitherto unrevealed younger brother. Poor, put-upon Dom always gets the lion’s share of angst in these flicks, and Diesel excels at displays of anguish that slowly morph into tightly bottled fury, and then explode into uncontrolled rage.
Unfortunately, such moments of actual humanity are few and far between, overwhelmed by the efforts of visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang’s team. Nothing feels the slightest bit real in the resulting vehicular and mano a mano mayhem, which too frequently looks blatantly, howlingly fake.
The nadir? The point at which this cacophonous mess goes way, way beyond jumping the shark? The point at which even Tuesday evening’s eager theater audience succumbed to disgusted jeers?
The moment when a 1984 Pontiac Fiero gets blasted into space — with two of our heroes aboard, in vintage, duct-taped bathysphere suits — courtesy of rocket boosters.
This waste of celluloid — which clocks in at a butt-numbing, self-indulgent 145 minutes — isn’t a film, it’s a clanging pinball machine. With about that much emotional impact.
So:
Ongoing mega-villainess Cipher (Charlize Theron), finally captured by CIA mastermind Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), manages an improbable escape with the assistance of flamboyant aspiring autocrat Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen). These events occur elsewhere, while we eavesdrop on Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Dom, living a quiet life off-grid while raising the latter’s young son, Little Brian (distinguished from “big” Brian, referencing the character played by the late Paul Walker).
Dom is doing his best to settle into the role of doting dad, but Letty is chafing; “This isn’t us,” she insists. She’s therefore delighted by the arrival of hard-charging Roman (Tyrese Gibson), science-minded Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and genius hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). They bring the news of Cipher’s escape, during an incident which caused Mr. Nobody’s plane to crash in the remote jungle of a fictitious Central American country.
Cue a recon mission, and darn if Dom doesn’t join them at the last second. (Little Brian has been left in the care of big Brian; it’s nice that Walker’s character continues to “live” off-camera.) Their arrival at the downed plane prompts the first of this limp-noodle script’s many examples of dumb, superfluous dialogue:
“Move fast, guys,” Ramsey gravely intones. “Local military will be here in 10 minutes.”
Actually, they show up in 5 minutes.
Although Dom and his crew initially retrieve the all-important whatzit concealed within the shattered plane, their success is short-lived, thanks to unexpected interference by — gasp! shudder! — Dom’s younger brother, Jakob (John Cena). Heavens! He has grown up and become a bad guy!
Indeed. Jakob makes off with the whatzit, later re-uniting with Cipher and Otto, in the latter’s huge, heavily fortified aircraft hanger (one of production designer Jan Roelfs’ many cool sets). Where, for some undisclosed reason, Cipher is enclosed within a large, glass-walled cell with no visible amenities.
(At which point, Constant Companion nudged me. “How does she go potty?”
(“More to the point,” I countered, “how does she keep changing into another of those sleekly chic outfits by costume designers Sanja Milkovic Hays and Rick Owens?”)
(In fairness, this new aesthetic is far superior to the blonde dreadlocks Theron sported in The Fate of the Furious.)
Anyway…
The whatzit is a large green mechanical cantaloupe, divided awhile back into two half-spheres, both of them well-hidden. Mr. Nobody had one; the other is protected in a vault in Edinburgh, Scotland. When re-attached, and then activated by a third item — a mysterious “key” — the user will be able to manipulate every computer-controlled thing in the world: from individual smart phones to nuclear missile launch codes.
The prospect has Otto rubbing his hands with glee.
This tried-and-true narrative template — George Lucas does it best, in his Star Wars films — allows for a series of “mini-missions” that build to the final, all-stops-out, landscape-shattering confrontation. But it still doesn’t come close to justifying the 145-minute running time.
One aspect of the mission sends Letty and newly arrived Scooby member Mia (Jordana Brewster) to Tokyo, where a vicious fracas ultimately reveals — gasp! shudder! — the return of Han (Sung Kang), who supposedly perished in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. (Like all good comic book series, this franchise has a habit of resurrecting dead characters.)
(It’s hardly a spoiler, because Han is shown in all of this film’s publicity artwork.)
As always, car enthusiasts will drool over the automotive eye candy employed along the way. Noteworthy examples include a Bugatti Veyron, a Morgan Aero 8, a Noble M600 and an Aston Martin Rapide. Dom, a Dodge purist, handles — and wrecks (among others) — a 1970 Charger Tantrum, a 2020 Charger SRT Hellcat, and a fabricated Mid-Engine Charger.
And — imagine! — Dom always finds a convenient place to park, even in the most bustling section of Edinburgh.
The film’s third-act climax involves our heroes’ pursuit of a monstrous, 14-foot-high, 26-ton, three-sectioned armored vehicle dubbed (by the production crew) The Armadillo. Which is an insult to armadillos, because this blatantly CGI-sweetened sequence is no more realistic than Wile E. Coyote’s antics in a Road Runner cartoon.
Frankly, the only genuinely engaging chase sequence takes place late at night, on London’s streets, during Dom’s brief reunion with Cockney crime boss Queenie Shaw (Helen Mirren, always a hoot), while they evade a dozen or so police cars.
Diesel does his best, but even his heavily muscled shoulders can’t carry the weight of this overstuffed turkey. Rodriguez displays welcome tough-gal ferocity, and Theron is quietly malevolent as the sinister Cipher. Rasmussen is appropriately smug and condescending, as the hissably vile Otto; Cena is believably lethal as the thoroughly dangerous Jakob.
Emmanuel gets one choice scene, when Ramsey — who never learned to drive — is forced to hijack a van in order to pursue some baddies.
Vinnie Bennett and Finn Cole deliver genuine pathos as, respectively, Dom and Jakob’s younger selves.
Brewster and Kang aren’t given much material; they’re both overshadowed by Anna Sawai’s Elle, a young woman rescued by Han, back in the day.
Most atrociously, Roman and Tej have been reduced to Laurel & Hardy imbeciles. Gibson and Bridges may have enjoyed riffing off each other, but the result feels … well … demeaning. Particularly during their climactic moment.
I also grew weary (and lost count) of the many times Jakob, Otto and/or Cipher captured Dom and the gang, and — rather than simply killing them — bragged about their intentions, in the manner of a James Bond villain, before leaving our heroes yet another opportunity to escape.
Sadly, this film concludes with the obvious foreshadowing of yet another installment, which Lin is rumored to helm. I can only hope that dismal box-office return will preclude that possibility … ’cause this franchise has run out of gas.
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