Vroom! Bwoosh! Flex! Vin Diesel John Cena It’s finally Fast and Furious 9. Cars! Magnets Explosions It doesn’t matter what it is! Caaaars
Fast and Furious 9 (formerly F9) was originally scheduled for May 2017. In the early days after the COVID-19 pandemic , F9 was one the first blockbusters that pushed its release date. Now it lands as theaters reopen across the UK and the US. F9 won’t stream on HBO Max, or any other streaming services. This means you need to follow local guidelines and only go to a venue if it is safe and convenient for you. It’s a movie. Fast and Furious 9 is a movie. It’s possibly the most movie-like movie ever made.
F9’s opening shot and post-credits scenes are filled with the usual outrageous stunts and muscular emoting that Hollywood is known for. Justin Lin , the returning director of Fast and Furious, is among the cast. While they may not have realized they were creating the film that brought back movie theatres, the cast clearly has the kind of fun we need right now. Cinema is a medium that can intensify exquisite emotions or allow supercars to turbo-boost off the cliffs and be captured by fighter planes. Cinema is as cool as it gets.
In the ninth installment of the automotive action-fest Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez are back from Avengers Infinity War to retire to the farm and live off the grid with their curly-haired Little Brian. When their old crime team comes calling, neither can resist running around the world in muscle cars and muscle tees doing superspy shizz. A-Team-style, consequence-free shootouts between unspecified military men lead to one-half of some superweapon thing. It’s what? Dude, it doesn’t matter. Vin and his gang are on the wrong side with a face from their past.
You can scratch that: It doesn’t matter if stuff explodes and almost never stops. Fast and Furious 9 has a scene where Chris “Ludacris” Bridges states, “As long we obey the laws physics, we will be fine.” He forgets to mention that these are the laws physics as portrayed in Looney Tunes cartoons. This movie is full of set pieces that revolve around a giant magnet. It could as easily be shipped in a box with ACME printed on it. You expect Fast 11 and to finish with Vin and his friends building a tunnel up a mountain and driving in it. Then blowing it up.
Action inflation in the nine series ( and some) movies means that stunts that were once considered spectacular are now routinely relegated to the background. Vin Diesel and John Cena, the new villain, leap across moving trucks and throw themselves into thin air from several stories above the ground. It’s just another way to get from one place to another.
Although the constant cartoon nonsense can be quite annoying, the film has enough room to let loose and enjoy a few moments with the familiar familia. All the women in the film do well than most movies of this type, with Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, Anna Sawai, Helen Mirren, and newcomer Anna Sawai all contributing to the plot’s success (until the lights turn green again and it’s back down to Vin’s pecs smashing into each others).
Nevertheless, Tyrese and Ludacris are well-known as comedy relief. Every now and then, the film stops to see them having fun. Their schtick is a big contributor to the film being nearly two hours long.
The only gag that seems like it could have been pulled from a script is a conversation about how the gang must really be indestructible to survive such insane stuff. Although it’s funny, it also emphasizes the fact that all of this hair-raising violence has no consequences.
