It used to be a running joke. "The only thing left for the Fast and Furious franchise to do is go to space." But Vin Diesel and Justin Lin apparently took it as a dare, so in F9: The Fast Saga, that's exactly what happens. Tej and Roman put on make-shift astronaut suits, strap into a car that the Tokyo Drift guys attached rocket boosters to, and blast themselves into orbit to intercept a satellite. Is it stupid? Oh, yeah, it's stupid. But, then again, a lot of things in this franchise have been stupid — amnesia plotlines, zombie cars, screwy timelines — yet somehow those things only added to the endearing nature of this loud, melodramatic soap opera we call the Fast & Furious films. Sadly, though, Dominic Toretto has finally been chased down by an opponent he can't beat: the law of diminishing returns. It turns out, Tej and Roman going to space isn't affectionately stupid. It's just plain stupid. And I'm sorry to report that's a fair assessment of the movie as a whole.
Part of the problem is a tonal imbalance that the movie never solves. On one hand we have the usual F&F spectacle — increasingly ridiculous action scenes where our heroes swing their cars over giant ravines using the leftover bits from a broken rope bridge or run down the bad guys by employing giant magnets that almost bend reality to their will. These sequences are nowhere near the best action this series has offered, although I could see being appeased by them if you're an action junkie just wanting "more of the same" from this movie. The issue is that the spectacle is melded with a new, tragic and very po-faced backstory for Dom (Diesel), where we learn that he has a brother, Jakob (John Cena), who no one has ever talked about before, and that their father died in a car-race crash under mysterious circumstances many years ago which charted a troublesome course for the Toretto family. The brothers Toretto turned on each other and went their separate ways. Dom became the mystic street-racing sage we all know and love. Jakob became … uh, a super spy who worked for Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) before going rogue. If you think about it, you can almost understand why Diesel and Lin (returning to direct his fifth movie in the saga after taking a few off) decided to introduce Jakob. "Family" has always been this franchise's biggest ongoing concern, so introducing a new Toretto makes some amount of sense. It also provides an excuse for bringing Dom's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) back into the fold, even though she's supposed to be out of the game, living a quiet family life with Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner somewhere.
But in execution, it's all just terrible. We can sort buy Vin and his crew as super spies because it's been a steady escalation across nine films from pesky street-racing criminals to international super-thieves to world-renowned government operatives. But, with Jakob, we're supposed to believe that Dom has a secret brother who, completely separate from the rest of the series, just happened to become one of the world's deadliest criminals? I mean, at some point we have to draw a line, people, and I'm drawing it here. Not helping matters is that John Cena is basically a block of wood through the whole movie, bringing not an ounce of fun or charisma to the role. Jakob is likely the worst villain this series has ever had.
The plot is … well, it's the same plot all these movies have now: There's a super-powered tech device, and if it gets into into the wrong hands, it means the world is screwed. F9 opens with Dom and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) retired and living off the grid. Dom seems happy teaching his young son, Brian, the difference between various wrenches in the garage. However, Tej (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) show up with troubling news: Mr. Nobody has captured Cipher (Charlize Theron, the villain from the previous installment), but the plane he was transporting her on was hijacked and went down in Central America. Before crashing, Nobody sent an SOS signal specifically to Dom's crew that launches an ongoing mystery. Dom soon figures out that his long-lost brother Jakob is involved, as is Han (Sung Kang), the F&F series legend whose death had been shown no less than three times in these movies so far. It turns out, Han isn't as dead as everyone thought, and he eventually rejoins to crew to help Dom take down his brother and save the world.
It's nice to see Han back, even if he isn't given all that much to do. In fact, there's a fair bit of fan service sprinkled throughout this film for the hardcores that almost makes buying a ticket worthwhile. Characters most filmgoers won't even remember like Don Omar's Santos and Shea Whigham's Agent Stasiak briefly drop by. Even better, half the damn cast of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (forever the most underrated installment in the saga) returns, including Lucas Black, Shad "Bow Wow" Moss and Jason Tobin. (Against all odds, it's Tobin who gets the one legitimately hilarious laugh line in the movie). There's also a post-credits stinger that promises a movie that's better than the one we just watched. (Strengthening my theory that Fast & Furious and Marvel are the only two franchises that should be allowed to have post-credits scenes. They're the only two that have earned the right.)
But no amount of fan service can spackle over the fact that this is a franchise now officially running on fumes. Fast 5 through 7 were the glory days — silly, chaotic, action films that had a giant warm heart at the center. Then Paul Walker died, and while he was never among the series' biggest strengths, losing him did throw the whole enterprise off-balance. The train started jumping off the track a bit with The Fate of the Furious, though Jason Statham was largely able to keep it from completely derailing with a enjoyably goofy performance that included him killing a plane full of bad guys while baby-sitting Dom's kid. F9 feels like it carries over the stuff from Fate that didn't work (gimmicky action scenes, endless exposition) while leaving the stuff that did work (an actual sense of fun!) behind.
There's no Statham in F9, and there's no Dwayne Johnson either. Going in, I didn't think that would be a problem. (Johnson, in particular, seems to have worn out his welcome here.) But I also didn't think they'd be replaced by long, flashback sequences featuring a different actor playing Young Dom and Michael Rooker in a long-haired wig. We don't need these things in a Fast & Furious movie. We don't need need some long-lost brother to illustrate how important family is to Dom. We already know that because his family has been right next to him all along, and their names are Letty, Tej, Roman, Han and, yes, even Ramsey. (Speaking of which: Nathalie Emmanuel — still underused, but things are improving on that front.) Heck, if anything, the series should probably have given one of THEM an evil sibling with a secretive past that Dom and his family would then have to reckon with. One, it wouldn't have gone against established series continuity, and, two, it could have pulled the group tighter together instead of making it feel like this is a solo movie for Dom that everyone else just gets to splash around the fringes in.
The disappointments continue. A pseudo-daughter for Han appears brandishing a samurai sword, but her action scene is ruined by endless shaky cam. There's a bit with Cardi B that might be the most out-of-place scene to ever appear in a Fast & Furious movie. We were promised stronger material for the women in the main cast, but all that really resulted in is one scene where Letty and Mia sit down for a talk in Tokyo. (It's not bad, but the movie could have used a lot more of that kind of thing!) And, finally, how the series continues to deal with Walker's absence is only growing in awkwardness. Dom's son is named after Brian in tribute, but Brian O'Conner is also still alive in the F&F universe. We just aren't able to see him because the actor playing him died. The way the series clumsily tap-dances around this issue makes me think they may have been better off giving Brian a heroic death two movies ago. In fact, if things don't take a hard swerve toward a better direction with Fast X, we may end up wishing the entire franchise died a heroic death two movies ago, back when it was the most fun action series going. Those days are growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
