For many, it is hard to dislike the movies in the high-octane Fast & Furious series. Fast & Furious movies may be pure escapist, but even the bad ones in the long-running franchise are sure to be entertaining.
Often outrageous and silly, these entertaining films with muscular characters and cars keep finding new ways of topping each other. Do you feel that Vin Diesel just driving off the rocky area on edge of the sea is cool? If yes, you might find the actor doing it with a train exploding in the backdrop to be at least just as cool. Would that not suffice for you? What about him careening off a similar area amid Thailand, even as sharks swim under him and an aircraft soars above his head? Seeing that action sequence in Thailand, you might think this to yourself: ‘That is more like it’.
Diesel reprises the role of Dominic Toretto, now a global driver who specializes in the processes of extracting, transporting and delivering highly classified stuff. In F9, Toretto and his spouse, Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty, are leading an off-grid lifestyle as a message makes them embark on a different mission. The two characters join Tyrese Gibson’s Roman, Nathalie Emmanuel’s Ramsey, Ludacris’s Tej, and Jordana Brewster’s Mia as they face their nemesis in John Cena’s Jakob.
Early in F9, it appears that director Justin Lin is perhaps grounding stuff in a much more dramatic universe than the franchise’s previous installments. Why? Because Lin opens the film with an information dump that makes Jakob and Dom familiar to us as brothers, unlike ski-diving vehicles. The introduction is an extremely unpleasant moment, which gives information about Dom and Jakob’s sibling rivalry. However, then, the movie goes far ahead of all such drama. The next sequence itself is a speedy chase set in Thailand, with tanks, machine guns, Ferraris, fighter jets, and vast stretches of forest and bright blue water, alongside the cliff jump scenario.
The remaining parts of the movie focus on Jakob’s operation involving a doomsday weapon. The last hour of this film is an impasse between Jakob Toretto and the members of his team and Dominic Toretto and his crew. Charlize Theron comes later in the movie, and she again proves why action films are turning into her forte lately. Theron portrays a femme fatale character here with muscular stunts and steely glances. It is another female warrior-like character in the action movie franchise, one with the opposite effect to Michelle Rodriguez’s heroine.
Dominic Toretto is easily noticeable among the jocular characters in the movie, and he can stay calm and self-controlled when confronted with danger. Vin Diesel is known for playing reserved and stoic characters, and Lin only demands the actor to do just that here. The director uses exaggerated explosions, sets and characters, thus allowing Diesel to become the calming guy amid all the chaos here.
Title cards such as ‘Edinburgh’ and ‘London’ offer a feeling of light-heartedness to the globe-trotting exploits that the makers show here with chutzpah. The basic story is essentially a pretext to hop from one location to another, so it would not be worthwhile to examine the details carefully. The movie would appear more engaging to you if you suspend your disbelief.
Besides, actioners such as this need not rely on storylines if they impress us through other means. The finest moments in the film come where Vin Diesel moves forward from a cliff, and John Cena zips through London traffic with the city police chasing him. There will be another installment in the series, but it would be tough to top this one released on June 25 in Irvine.