Fast X (dir. Louis Leterrier, 2023) — Review

Chugging through a two-part finale, the bell does not toll quite yet for Vin Diesel’s gearhead patriarch Dominic Toretto. Still, while the extended farewell is pure studio chicanery, a fan will not leave unsated by a film this stuffed with turbo accelerations, fist-fighting stunt doubles and decorative star names. Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren return as veterans, joined by new kids including Brie Larson and Jason Momoa. Clearly, the love of fast cars, hot chicks and muscle bound beefcake provides a powerful incentive for all manner of premium acting talent. But there remains also, the thrill of appearing in a twenty year old Hollywood franchise of rare authentic global appeal. Midway through, director Louis Leterrier offers a précis of the whole saga to date. The sequence takes aim at series latecomers, but the real point underlines the wistful mood. How many traffic violations have brought us here? How often has Diesel invoked the single, sacred word: family? Of course, once again the word means Dom’s cross-cultural crew of kindly Robin Hoods and it signifies his literal bloodline, menaced by Momoa’s panto-villainous Brazilian crime-lord. (His air of retro camp may raise eyebrows; queerbaiting, or simply bad taste? Hard to tell in this age and this franchise.)

“Fast X” is half the story: an elaborate reunion of all the A-list characters the previous nine movies introduced (yes, all of them), that starts-and-stalls its way toward a cliffhanger. Jason Momoa’s diabolical Dante, a flamboyant Brazilian crime mogul shoehorned into series peak “Fast Five” plays the villain. Along with Dante, son of bygone baddie Hernan Reyes, Charlize Theron’s super-hacker Cipher, driven by vengeance, pops up in time to portend, po-faced, “there’s a war coming.”

That war, ie Dante, arrives in Hefneresque silken attire, chafing at his dad’s killing in Fast Five, and hellbound on revenge by Dom’s family, both biological and chosen. Yes, more than ever before, it’s about family. Dom’s much-memed obsession with the word seems to have infected the world around him, with several supporting characters earnestly referring to Dom’s crew as such as, in sweet defiance of their multi-ethnic provenance.

It’s a great example of the beautiful way in which Fast X uses its straight-faced tone as a cudgel, battering the audience into comedic submission and almost daring viewers to take it seriously. No one on screen is laughing, which heightens both the humour and the wallop of the ever-satisfying stunts.

New director Louis Leterrier, who reportedly rewrote much of the script after old hand Justin Lin departed, wisely decides to focus on Dom, leaving the heaving ensemble cast with relatively little to do beyond dance around the yin-yang of Diesel and Momoa at the center of everything. The latter waltzes off with the whole shebang, turning in a delirious camp form of wooden, villainous himbo acting– smiling through punch-ups, painting the fingernails of corpses, and greeting his nemesis with a curtsey. Yet the sheer, bone-crunching unpredictability of the character- embodies the best quality of the franchise- and ensures that the comic shtick never overpowers his menace.

Unfazed by such dramaturgy, Leterrier deals confidently with the cameos and pyrotechnics, ushering the story through a green-screen world tour (Naples, Spitalfields, Antarctica), in a pro-wrestling adjacent tone. John Cena steps in from the octagon, in place of sometime co-star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (so far, no one has yet made a movie detailing his estrangement from Diesel, but perhaps Fast 12 could go there.) The fun can be infectious, when the vast spherical bomb rolls down a Roman hill, part Laurel and Hardy and part Indiana Jones. Later, the monosyllabic dialogue is punctuated by a warning that, should plans go sideways, “the fallout could be existential.” Thus, fans may forgive the way in which the screenplay spits in the face of logic or physics, or indeed even philosophy, the way that pointless scenes (such as a cameo from Pete Davidson) devolve into fistfights for no reason other than boredom. Fair enough.

By now, this franchise is a well-oiled money machine, something between a feature-length car commercial (“you’re gonna want to buy that electric DeLorean prototype”) and a “don’t try this at home” public safety announcement. Still, calling it the first part of a finale feels like little more than a marketing gimmick; Hollywood’s highest-octane franchise shows no signs of slowing, and one does well to recall that Helen Mirren claims she “shamelessly begged” for a part . Maybe the old gas-guzzling, muscle-shirted days of ‘FAMILY’ have passed into the rear view mirror; but if the DeLorean can switch gears, perhaps so can Fast.