The sky was the limit in 2021's F9; having seemingly run out of exotic locales to ship the franchise's revolving roster of rev-heads off to – you can really cover a lot of ground in 20 years, especially if you've got a souped-up ride – F9's co-writer and director, Justin Lin, hazarded a trip to space.
The result was a kind of zero gravity self-parody – which raised the question: Where was left for these car-jackers-turned-secret-agents to go?
Fast X is not short on answers: Rio, Naples, Rome, London, Antarctica – no Lonely Planet guidebook is safe. No more space travel, admittedly, but even so, this latest and nominally 'last' instalment (in fact merely the first in a tripartite finale) still feels like an overreach.
The mandate to up and up the ante has seen the so-called Fast Saga turn from dumb, hyper-stylish fun into something meaner and more airless.
That there were competing visions for this home stretch is clear from the directorial changeover that took place a week into production: Lin, who had returned for another round at the helm, reportedly clashed with Vin Diesel, aka Dominic Toretto, the devoted patriarch whose steady heartbeat is the metronome of the franchise. Diesel is also one of Fast X's producers. (The scramble to replace Lin culminated in the hiring of Louis Leterrier, most notable for his work on the first two films in the Transporter trilogy, the launchpad for Fast's own Jason Statham.)
For as long as we've known him, Dom has lived by a moral code consisting of a single principle: "Without family, you're nothing," as he puts it in this latest film. Of course, the Toretto clan goes beyond blood: It includes almost anyone who's sat round the table for a barbecue lunch with a Corona in hand, raised in celebration of another triumph in the realm of pedal-to-the-metal hijinks.
This idyll of community is precisely what's at stake in Fast X.
Making his Fast debut, Jason Momoa plays Dante Reyes, a swishy sociopath seeking to avenge the death of his father, Hernan Reyes, the Brazilian drug lord last seen dead on a sun-baked Rio de Janeiro bridge in 2011's Fast Five. Somewhere between Heath Ledger's Joker and Captain Jack Sparrow (no, it's not a good mix) and swathed in lavender silk, Dante also operates according to a succinct moral code: "Never accept death when suffering is owed."
Consequently, he's made it his mission to torment Dom, whom he holds responsible for his father's murder – and to that end, to torment his family: Dom's beloved Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his siblings Mia and Jakob (Jordana Brewster and John Cena), as well as his impossibly resourceful crew (Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges as Tej, Sung Kang as Han Lue, and Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey). All are toy mice to Dante's devil-cat. (There are plenty of other familiar faces and names back in play – including one or two that shouldn't be spoiled, though no seasoned viewer should really be surprised to see any legacy character crop up in these films, alive or dead.)
Dom's son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry), now an adolescent, is also due to get batted around. Happily, being extremely level-headed runs in the family.
For a film so steadfast in its family values, the departure of Lin – the director of five Fast films, including Fast Five, the first film in the series to attract critical appreciation – feels perhaps more glaring than it should.
Though he retains a co-writing credit on X and stayed on as a producer, his decision to vacate the driver's seat is a sign that the Fast family is not immune to in-fighting. Diesel, it seems, is committed to his character's mantra only so far.
There's a lot at stake, certainly, both on-screen and off: With a budget of $US340 million ($512 million), Fast X is one of the most expensive movies ever made. To put that in perspective: The jackpot for which Toretto and co are willing to attempt to steal an entire bank vault from a Brazilian prison in Fast Five is a mere $100 million.
That film – which, under Lin's guidance, began the series' shift away from racing for pink slips and towards Mission Impossible-style heists – is the primary touchstone here. Fast X opens with a retread of the vault-theft escapade, now seen from Dante's perspective – though the snazzy mustard suit he's sporting in the flashback, together with the use of a film-grain filter, suggests the 70s more than 2011.
The retroactive shoehorning-in of the Dante character is indicative of a franchise getting tangled in its increasingly cumbersome lore. In two-plus decades, enough siblings have been invented and characters brought back from the dead to suggest that there's more of a resemblance between The Fast and the Furious and The Bold and the Beautiful than merely their titles.
Lin's departure aside, the mandate to leave no family member behind may actually be getting in the way of putting on a good show. (Even Brian O'Conner, the character played by the late Paul Walker, remains alive in the Fast family-verse, and happily married to Mia.)
With so much reverence for its players, these films have started to feel more like a CGI-augmented meet-and-greet; we're shunted from one gorgeous backdrop to another, lingering just long enough to witness our heroes barrel through the cobbled alleyways and ancient piazzas, leaving a simulated, rubble-strewn trail of destruction in their wake.
Fast X is in cinemas now.
