F 9

 

F9

What can be said about Fast and Furious? What hasn’t been said about Fast and Furious? This is the ninth film in the twenty years run of the franchise. The worldwide gross box office is $6.8b at a cost of approximately of $2.1b. The films are formula driven. Fast cars, muscle bound  men, tough but attractive women, insane car chases and a plot that is an afterthought. Fast and Furious is character centric. Vin Diesel is the main character Dominic Toretto who has appeared in nearly all the films with his posse of  actors which he refers to as family.

This movie is a reunion of all the past FF characters. One character died in an earlier movie, but that did not stop the writers. Missing from this reunion is Dwight “The Rock” Johnson. Apparently there is bad blood between Johnson and Diesel. Johnson is a by the book kinda guy; on time do the shoot. Whereas Diesel is a tardy slacker who likes to schmooze with the crew. However, both manage to make $20m a film each.

The new element in this film is Dom’s estranged brother Jackob played by John Cena. I think they brought Cena in to make Diesel’s acting look better. Vin Diesel’s acting is like a car with one gear. He depends on his signature sneer to carry his acting. To dramatize the fall out between the brothers they used two younger actors as versions of Diesel and Cena. Aside from one having a round head for Diesel and the other a rectangular face for Cena, they looked nothing like them.

The film has some fantastic stunts which are either real or CG. One scene is just imbecilic with  two characters in outer space in a car with a rocket engine strapped to the back. A “ jumping the shark” moment.

The bottom line is if you did not see any prior FF films this is not for you. If you have, you know what to expect. FF 10 is in the works and will be released in 2022. If it is the last one I think it will open the door for Cena . He needs to work on his sneer.