F9

Seriously, that's it. That's the title.

After eight films (nine if you include Hobbs & Shaw, but let’s not) of continual escalation and ridiculousness, the stupidity inherent to the Fast & Furious franchise has reached critical mass with its ninth entry. Your mileage on the latest Fast film may vary depending on your capacity for La Familia's characteristic bullshittery. I, for one, was maxed out.

When Fate of the Furious came out in 2017, I was unsure of the direction or longevity of the franchise post-Furious 7. At that point, the franchise had reached unparalleled heights of hilariously over-the-top, all-American action with 5 and 6, while also achieving an emotional culmination in 7. Fate felt like a not-awful but somewhat trivial and aimless sideways venture that struggled to find footing in the wake of Paul Walker's death and the writing-out of his character, Brian. It featured new levels of ridiculousness, but without quite as much punch or heart as previous films. At the time, I couldn’t decide whether to attribute that to mere post-culmination woes, or to the creative team finally running out of what little ability they had to sell their ludicrous plots semi-convincingly.

F9 seems to confirm the latter. As with Fate, the ante and action are once again upped, but the heart and emotions of the film feel more phony than the franchise ever has before. Meanwhile, lazy plotting and even lazier direction make this supposedly larger-than-ever member of the franchise feel flaccid. It’s hard to accuse any one moment or idea in this franchise of “jumping the shark” at this point, but perhaps too many absurd ideas and feats in one go just makes it all blur together into one bloated, headache-inducing mess.

I guess I’ll start with the main hook of the film: main hero Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is revealed to have a long-lost brother, Jakob, played by John Cena. (That’s not a spoiler; it’s in the trailer.) Not only is he long-lost, but Dom has known about him this entire time, AND he just so happens to be a super spy, super racecar driver, and superhuman on the same level as—or perhaps greater than—Dom. In an attempt to break free of his brother’s shadow, Jakob decides to help some terrorists unleash a mysterious super-weapon on the world. Go figure!

By itself, that premise feels relatively on-par with where the franchise has been going for the last four or five films. I’m willing to meet this insane franchise on its own terms and say, “Sure, let’s go with that.” But director Justin Lin and his writing partner Daniel Casey (along with, I can only assume, Vin’s input) couldn’t stop there. This also had to be the film that resurrected a dead character, brought back multiple other fan-favorites, sent the team to space, and dug deep into Dom’s backstory via extended flashbacks. All while at least maintaining the series quota for high-performance cars running into each other, getting shot at, and blowing up. That’s a lot of movie.

It’s a ton of moving parts to work with, and a more talented team might have been able to pull all of it off. But the people behind the franchise where everything can be explained away by the Power of Family™ are not that team. Nearly every single moment, whether intended as a heartfelt confrontation or a massive physical feat, feels undercut by the need to move the plot forward, each one being brushed over. There’s just so much plot to wade through that none of it feels significant. And that’s an odd dynamic for a film that’s meant to feel like the biggest and baddest yet.

The cast doesn’t do this story any favors either, though maybe they didn’t really get a chance to, with the whirlwind of plot swirling around them. Cena, despite being quite the funny and charismatic person in other appearances, looks like stiff plastic throughout, and Diesel’s overly made-up face seems to take on a mind of its own during close-ups, quivering and twisting into odd expressions whenever he attempts what I’m sure he considers “serious acting.” The rest are kind of just there—bless Nathalie Emmanuel for being almost-charming, though for all of her scenes, she’s saddled with Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson, who have been and remain dead weight on the franchise in all but maybe their first appearances. Michelle Rodriguez just kind of sleepily glares at Dom through half-closed eyelids for most of the movie. Charlize Theron returns as the previous film’s main villain, Cipher, and she’s perhaps the only one who really “brings it,” though she isn’t given much to do—her best scene is an argument with one of F9’s villains about which Star Wars character best represents him in this story.

And maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t go to these movies for story or acting! I go for cars, and action, and Vin Diesel—my Facebook crush!” And that’s fair. There is a lot of action, a little bit of driving, some fun (if not as fun as they could have been) super-magnets, and a lot of sloppily-explained globetrotting. I imagine there’s a lot of fun to be had in this movie if you really love the franchise. I don’t. I appreciate pieces of it, but would hesitate before calling any entry in the series legitimately good. At best, the Fast & Furious films make for good blockbuster fodder to watch with friends while drinking and postulating about how Vin Diesel convinced all these people to fund and participate in his personal fantasy. At their worst (Hobbs & Shaw), they’re utterly masturbatory, meatheaded slogs.

Fortunately, F9 never quite reaches those lows (though Vin gives himself one hilariously indulgent fight scene that might be Dom’s greatest and dumbest feat yet—but I’ll count that one as a plus). But at two and a half hours long, this Fast film feels anything but. Which is kind of amazing, given how much is crammed into it and how quickly the plot has to actually move to account for every new idea. I don’t know where this series will go next, and I’m not sure I care; each film ends in almost exactly the same way, while also pretending like it could be the last one.

There is a mid-credits stinger that, I’m sad to admit, actually piqued my interest. So consider me there, to inflict another migraine on myself, for F10, or FX, or whatever abbreviation they go with for that one. But I’ll probably skip writing a review.