Fast X

I had a mission walking into that theater, and that is to count the number of "family" spoken in this movie. At the end of the day, I got about 2 "familia", 3 "fam", and a grand total of 28 "family". See if they can break that record next time!

Nothing much needs to be commented about the film itself: we launched cars into space last time to destroy satellites, what less could you expect? Screw the logistics, screw physics, and screw Newton with his screwing apple tree! And guess what, if you do manage to stay awake after an hour, you'll start to understand how F&F actually survives the 22-year journey of production --- by not giving a screw! Hey, remember when Gal Gadot's character got blew up? Yeah screw that she quitting DCU so we resurrects her in our universe. Remember how Jakob was the cold-blooded villain just one movie before this? Screw that we got Peacemaker to play him this time cuz it makes great comedy. Remember when not even Dune dared announcing sequels until the first week of release? Screw that, Villeneuve ain't know nothing about making sequels, we bringing Fast 12 on the calendar while releasing the trailer!

So yeah, here we are, anticipating Fast 11 next year, when the man named Dominic I-Am-Groot Toretto asserts dominion over Dante the Jokerized Aquaman, of course, with the help of his family.

Fast & Furious 9 did what a lot of franchises do at some point: it took the action into outer space. This seemed to me like a good point to call it quits. But with the money still rolling in, nobody in Hollywood was going to end this cash cow; thus we have Fast X, the first in a rumoured three part finale (until the inevitable reboot).

I've been on board with the franchise since the start, sticking with it as it moved from the street racing world into more James Bond territory, the action getting more and more ridiculous with each chapter. Seeing how each movie would top the one before in terms of craziness is what kept me entertained. But Fast X is just dumb, and it's not even dumb fun.

The stunts are more preposterous than ever, but the film is never thrilling, every interminable action scene enhanced by rather ropey CGI (the flames, in particular, look really bad). There are some dreadful attempts at humour (mostly courtesy of Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris), and we get all that inevitable crap about the importance of family (if I see the gang having another barbecue I think I'll hurl).

And then there's Jason Momoa as villain Dante...

I can see what they were going for -- kooky flamboyant psycho capable of almost anything -- but Momoa is absolutely awful, his performance bordering on camp, not helped by the character's dubious choice of attire. It's hard to find Dante menacing when he's flouncing about in a silky shirt. I'll no doubt watch the next two films for the sake of completion, but with Momoa on board it'll be hard going.

Fast X is easily the weakest of the series so far, but I'll give it 3/10 because I guess things could get even worse.

Ever since the Fast Five (in my opinion the best movie in the series), The Fast Franchise has taken a nosedive. It is now straight up ridiculous what this series has turned into. A street gang, is basically an army of unstoppable and invinsible soldiers. Seriously these people would probably survive a nucular blast - or a more likely scenario, Dom Tortetto would likely absorb the blast and shoot it from his eyeballs. It's gotten that absurd.

While this movie is close to being an MCU movie, it is drastically better than the horrific previous movie, which made me rethink what a movie is. Fast X is pretty good for the most part, if you can switch off your brain and not take anything you see seriously at all.

The story is as you would expect - bad, but it flows from point A to B which is good enough. The visual effects are great, the soundtrack is pretty good as well. But the clear standout here is Jason Momoa. His acting and character is a blast to watch. Every scene he's in, keeps your attention, because he brings a much needed fun and humorous vibe to this weird movie. Jason was clearly having fun here, because it translates to the screen. His crazy character was more compelling than most, if not all of the previous villains of the series combined. So the reason I am even giving this movie a 6, is solely because of Jason as Dante.

Fast X ends of a stupid cliffhanger, but if we get to see more of Dante, I'm up for the next installment. Let's just hope thye don't stick to this trend of making villains heroes by the end, and killing off more people only to bring them back a few years later.

I mean they didn't even try to hide the fact they are all mostly two word titles with copy-pasting the same sentences in different order in one paragraph. Racing Victors, Racing Heat, Racing Rivals, Racing Independence, Racing Mavericks, Racing Tranquility, Racing Liberty, Racing Bliss, Racing Winners, Racing Explorer, Racing Heaven... and many, many more - and those are just the titles starting with Racing, there are other obvious patterns with different title words.

This has to be a world record for bogus ChatGPT reviews. I mean it's pretty bad when the producers have to stoop so low, and they're that lazy to even hide the fact they are trying to fool their audience this way. It also proves how little faith they have in their own film. The current Rotten Tomatoes critics 54% rating is a more accurate. I gave it a generous 6/10.

It's too bad more effort didn't go into the writing and S/VFX (which needed major toning down and lacked realism), as they put towards trying to fool their fans of the franchise. This was too long, too slow, and too cartoonish. The writing was infantile, like it was written by a bunch of prepubescent giggly teens, and Momoa's character was too overboard and can't be taken in long doses. They basically tried to copy The Joker's character instead of creating his own persona. His performance however was still the most engaging and entertaining. Don't even get me started on the lame ending which will punish anyone following Vin Diesel on social media with him constantly counting down the days until the next ridiculous part 2 of Fast X. They should've just put us all out of our misery and ended this franchise at a nice even number.

Nevertheless, still a decent popcorn watch riddled with brainless exposes of plot holes and nonsense entertainment, especially if you have nothing better to do and almost 3 hours to waste.

Do you remember the game people used to play where someone would write down the first line of a story on a piece of paper, fold it back so the next person couldn't see it and then they'd add another line, fold it back etc. Then at the end you'd read the story in full and laugh at the results? Well I think that's how Fast X was written. It's a mish-mash of the previous 9 films rolled into one with cameo appearances from almost anyone who's ever starred in any of them. The problem is the story is nonsensical - we have jumps to shoots all around the world for no reason at all. We have a few maudlin scenes from the past. And of course (this is not a spoiler as it's now everywhere in the press) Fast X is not in fact the last film of the franchise so there is no closure of any sort at the end. The cast felt tired, going through the motions. I think even they think there's maybe been too many movies in this franchise. The only saving grace here was the wonderfully over the top villain played brilliantly by Jason Momoa - every scene he was in stood out.

Yes there's the usual over the top stunts (though personally I thought not as good as some of the previous films) racing for no real point, fight scences etc so the fans of the franchise will probably enjoy it. But as a standalone film and even in comparison with the previous 9, it's a bit of a mess.