F9 (2021 | USA | 143 minutes | Justin Lin)
I’ll start this by admitting that I’m among the few humans on this planet who hadn’t seen a single frame of what’s evolved from humble street racing beginnings to become the globe-spanning multi-billion dollar Fast and Furious Saga. But since getting hooked on the exceptional Netflix documentary Formula One: Drive to Survive during the pandemic, I saw that there was a new Fast installation and thought, “hey, maybe I do like fast cars and the people who drive them? and if I love F1 maybe I’ll like F9 nine times more? and, I’m sure I can go into this knowing absolutely nothing.” If you think that’s a pretty dumb rationale for speeding headlong into a franchise’s ninth episode without having even read a plot synopsis of the previous eight, I agree completely. But it’s nowhere near the gleeful idiocy of this movie, which felt like the most hilariously stupid thing I’ve seen by a hundred dozen carlengths. Whether you see this as awesome or awful will almost certainly depend on the expectations that you bring to the racetrack.
To their credit, director Justin Lin and co-screenwriter Daniel Casey’s ponderous script makes it very easy for a newbie to follow the convoluted and seemingly relentlessly ret-conned mythology of the saga, often with near-direct-to-camera exposition. An early howler of an example comes when Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) rolls up in an armored to convince our hero Dom Torretto (Vin Diesel) to leave the peace of retirement of his remote farmlife with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his young son (Vin Diesel’s son Vincent Sinclair) and return to the super-spy action. He reminds him that Cipher (Charlize Theron in a glass prison cell, still decked out in well tailored supervillainous costume, sporting diamond earrings, and keeping up a severe bowlcut), the film’s big bad, is “the woman who killed the mother of your child.” Seems like something a guy would recall without a prompt, but these people do tend to get hit in the head with upsetting regularity.
A painfully melodramatic series of flashbacks also introduce both a brother and a tragic backstory for Dom involving a childhood at a downmarket track supporting his father’s racing career. Here, Vinnie Bennett goes for it overacting as a far more emotive younger version of the Dom Torretto as portrayed by Vin Diesel. Similarly, Finn Cole brings a soap opera energy to the younger version of never-before-mentioned estranged little brother Jakob, who is played in present day scenes by a seemingly cast-from-concrete facsimile of John Cena as a Terminator-like “master thief, assassin, and a high-performance driver”. These dusty hued scenes really drag (not like a race), are supremely obvious, and convey information that could’ve been explained with a few lines of dialogue, but this isn’t the kind of film that leaves any sentimentality on the cutting room floor.
Here, I’d give a spoiler warning, but as far as I can tell there’s no element of the plot, character resurrection, secret identity, or outlandish setpiece that will come as a surprise to anyone who watched the (also very long) trailer. Broadly speaking, some bad guys took down an airplane to steal a piece of a world-killing techno-device and the “family” has to come back together to stop them from assembling the pieces and using the “device” to take over the world. Satellites and computer viruses are involved. Also, family. And fast cars going fast through the streets, dirt roads, and landmine-cluttered borders of Central America. And family fighting for and against and then for family. And so many explosions from above and below. And, did anyone mention chosen families? Because family is very important and if you forget, just wait a few beats and someone will remind you.
Most lines of dialogue are cliches, each platitude flatly delivered by a check-cashing cast with utmost sincerity, accompanied by ominous musical cues, and reinforced with dramatic camera movement. Improbably, Tyrese Gibson’s overcautious and incredulous Roman Pearce becomes the most relatable performer, acting as audience stand-in when he asks his “numbers guy” buddy Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, not without his charms) and l33t h4x0r Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) if they think its weird that their crew keeps surviving all of these bullets, crashes, and impossible situations. Like the filmmakers to the audience, they laugh at him, which is a real missed opportunity to contemplate whether they’re all living in a simulation. That explanation would certainly be more interesting fodder than taking this all at face value.
You’d imagine that an old Pontiac Fiero with rocket engines strapped to it would be a lead pipe lock for the most ridiculous part of any movie, but somehow, despite all odds, there is something more absurd. Is it another Oscar winner (Helen Mirren) showing up on set for a few hours with a cockney accent? Is it that there comes a time when the movie flashes back to the flashbacks? How about Grammy-winner Cardi B joining the Fast Family? Nope. As if inspired by the unholy love child of an Insane Clown Posse lyric and a classic Breaking Bad episode, the wildest and most central element of multiple chase scenes and fight sequences are: fucking magnets.
I’d try to say more about it, but I feel like it would turn into a theory wall debunking idiots who believe that vaccines make housekeys stick to their foreheads. Like the dozens of other bananas stunts and plot points, it’s best not to fight the electromagnetism and go with the flow. If you stop to think about any of this while the crew’s quest takes them through chases, hidden bunkers, and city streets around the globe—Mexico, London, Tokyo, Edinburgh, Tbilisi, Azerbaijan—evading gunfire, missiles, landmines, drones, steep cliffs, and an effete billionaire scion who’s compared unfavorably to a Jedi master, your head will surely feel like it’s been thrown through a wall, been driven through a street sign, and pummeled by a small private army. As plot contorts itself around the MacGuffins, action sequences are shot like the most expensive music videos you can imagine. They’re not necessarily coherent or balletic, but you can tell the spent a lot breaking stuff and blowing things up and its hard to deny the fun of watching money burn, even when its in service of accumulating even more money.
I may never know whether it’s intentionally funny or if F9 will join the ranks of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room as a cult-classic of inadvertent oblivious humor, but its definitely the most I’ve laughed in quite a while and I wasn’t alone in guffawing through the bloated running time. If you’re someone who’s going to see it (and you know you are), best to induce a brain freeze with a concession stand soda and a sugar high from a bag of sour patch kids. That, or a more adult indulgence might help you to gawk at the audacity of it, laugh through the immense stupidity, and enjoy the deep potentially self-referential corniness. I would never tell anyone to see F9, but if I heard that they had, I would happily spend hours dissecting it’s preposterousness. So do what you think is right. As a wise astronaut once said: “So long as you follow the laws of physics, you’ll be fine.”
F9 arrives in theaters on June 25. Your mileage may vary.