Fast & Furious X

Fast X finally went too far.

As far as I remember, people are always complaining about these movies being dumb. However, people often dismiss the charm of the action and the overcomplicated plots of the crazy writers trying to show how smart they are. This time they actually went too far.

Once again they retcon an old movie by adding scenes that weren't there. Once again they got caught on a "revenge plot" and once again family has to come together to defeat evil. They quite literally just rehashed the plot of the last 2-3 movies, except this time they got lazy!

The whole family is back with a brand new cast.

Allan Ritchson, I love the guy, but he can't act to save his life. He has the funniest dialogues in the entire movie, though.

Brie Larson, the second worsth actor in the entire movie, has absolutely no chemistry with the entire cast. It's actually impressive, she seems uncomfortable in every scene. I don't get it.

John Cena again charming his way into making you like his character, but he can't act either. Though he actually takes advantage of his dialogues and his own phisicality to sell the Jacob Toretto.

And Jason Momoa... Just played a goofier Joker. Jared Leto would be proud. He's even obsessed with the color purple. Someone must've felt very cheeky when he said something on the lines of "I don't wanna kill them, I just want to hurt them real bad". What a failure of a villain. Jumping back and forwards between a serious villain and an clown.

This was, overall, a very dull, uninteresting and boring disappointment. Fast 9 shoulda been the last one.

Not looking forward to the sequels to this mess, not at all.

I had a mission walking into that theater, and that is to count the number of "family" spoken in this movie. At the end of the day, I got about 2 "familia", 3 "fam", and a grand total of 28 "family". See if they can break that record next time!

Nothing much needs to be commented about the film itself: we launched cars into space last time to destroy satellites, what less could you expect? Screw the logistics, screw physics, and screw Newton with his screwing apple tree! And guess what, if you do manage to stay awake after an hour, you'll start to understand how F&F actually survives the 22-year journey of production --- by not giving a screw! Hey, remember when Gal Gadot's character got blew up? Yeah screw that she quitting DCU so we resurrects her in our universe. Remember how Jakob was the cold-blooded villain just one movie before this? Screw that we got Peacemaker to play him this time cuz it makes great comedy. Remember when not even Dune dared announcing sequels until the first week of release? Screw that, Villeneuve ain't know nothing about making sequels, we bringing Fast 12 on the calendar while releasing the trailer!

So yeah, here we are, anticipating Fast 11 next year, when the man named Dominic I-Am-Groot Toretto asserts dominion over Dante the Jokerized Aquaman, of course, with the help of his family.

Fast & Furious 9 did what a lot of franchises do at some point: it took the action into outer space. This seemed to me like a good point to call it quits. But with the money still rolling in, nobody in Hollywood was going to end this cash cow; thus we have Fast X, the first in a rumoured three part finale (until the inevitable reboot).

I've been on board with the franchise since the start, sticking with it as it moved from the street racing world into more James Bond territory, the action getting more and more ridiculous with each chapter. Seeing how each movie would top the one before in terms of craziness is what kept me entertained. But Fast X is just dumb, and it's not even dumb fun.

The stunts are more preposterous than ever, but the film is never thrilling, every interminable action scene enhanced by rather ropey CGI (the flames, in particular, look really bad). There are some dreadful attempts at humour (mostly courtesy of Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris), and we get all that inevitable crap about the importance of family (if I see the gang having another barbecue I think I'll hurl).

And then there's Jason Momoa as villain Dante...

I can see what they were going for -- kooky flamboyant psycho capable of almost anything -- but Momoa is absolutely awful, his performance bordering on camp, not helped by the character's dubious choice of attire. It's hard to find Dante menacing when he's flouncing about in a silky shirt. I'll no doubt watch the next two films for the sake of completion, but with Momoa on board it'll be hard going.

Fast X is easily the weakest of the series so far, but I'll give it 3/10 because I guess things could get even worse.

First, the car actions are great, a lot of imagination, a lot of CGI, and great locations.

In-between, we get some asskicking, much more ordinary.

Following these hate scenes, we get some emotional scenes.

Like love for family is everything. And of course some of them are dying to go back to some hate.

Diesel is such a bad actor, impossible to accept any of his emotional scenes, be it love or hate. He has not evolved in 20years of filming. There is nothing in between, just primitive emotions for the brainless.

Jason Momoa is the bad guy, followed be some minor bad guys. His character is so over the top, and he obviously enjoyed the acting. But some maniac jokes of bad taste are not funny at all.

His scenes are the only ones worth watching along with the fake computer generated car stunts, who throw overboard the most basic laws of physics. It is just incredible how many stuntmen and visual effects experts worked on that movie. I suppose each one only worked on 5 seconds of a scene. They all need to be paid, and it surely takes a hell of a resource management to make it a coherent finished product.

The music is just annoying during the stunts, just too loud, a brain killer...

For a budget of 349 mio USD, a lot of stars appear just for a few seconds, like they visit to attract people to the theatres to keep the money flowing in, and leave with the loot.

I won't name them, I don't want to be an acomplice of their deception...

Do you remember the game people used to play where someone would write down the first line of a story on a piece of paper, fold it back so the next person couldn't see it and then they'd add another line, fold it back etc. Then at the end you'd read the story in full and laugh at the results? Well I think that's how Fast X was written. It's a mish-mash of the previous 9 films rolled into one with cameo appearances from almost anyone who's ever starred in any of them. The problem is the story is nonsensical - we have jumps to shoots all around the world for no reason at all. We have a few maudlin scenes from the past. And of course (this is not a spoiler as it's now everywhere in the press) Fast X is not in fact the last film of the franchise so there is no closure of any sort at the end. The cast felt tired, going through the motions. I think even they think there's maybe been too many movies in this franchise. The only saving grace here was the wonderfully over the top villain played brilliantly by Jason Momoa - every scene he was in stood out.

Yes there's the usual over the top stunts (though personally I thought not as good as some of the previous films) racing for no real point, fight scences etc so the fans of the franchise will probably enjoy it. But as a standalone film and even in comparison with the previous 9, it's a bit of a mess.