“As long as you keep your expectations low with Fast X, you won’t come out as disappointed as I was with this fairly crowded and standard-issue entry,” Rotten Tomatoes critic Steven Prokopy wrote about the new addition to the “Fast and Furious” series. So that’s exactly what I did. I went in with no expectations and fully prepared to watch the Fast family drive their cars down the Earth’s core, considering the way these movies progressed in the past. But, I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised.
The “Fast and Furious” franchise is something you either know everything about or absolutely nothing. Once you start watching, you get engrossed in the lore to the point of no return, following the story of Dominic ‘Dom’ Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family.
The movie opens with the introduction of the new villain, Dante Reyes, played by Jason Momoa. Dante Reyes is introduced as the son of Hernan Reyes, who was defeated and then killed in the movie “Fast Five.” While it is just a sequence of poor editing to make it seem like Dante has really been in those scenes, at least it was nice seeing Brian’s (Paul Walker) face on the screen once more, even if it was simply in a flashback.
It’s the first bit of nostalgia that’s sprinkled throughout the entire movie. As someone who grew up watching these movies — because of my father’s obsession with them — I appreciated it. The callbacks made to past characters and events, the subtle mentions to Walker’s character and even the flashbacks shown, made it feel like everything was finally coming full circle.
Dante wasn’t the only new character that made it onto the screen. Alongside the return and appearance of characters like Cipher (Charlize Theron), Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) and Queenie Shaw (Helen Mirren), new additions were made into the Fast Family.
Legendary Rita Moreno made an appearance as Abuelita Toretto and Daniela Melchior played Isabel Neves, the younger sister of Elena, who entered the franchise in the fifth movie. Brie Larson showed up as Tess — the daughter of Mr. Nobody, who was absent from this movie without any explanation provided. Alan Ritchson was a new face as well, and he played the role of the surprise double-crosser, Agent Aimes.
What caught me off guard was the brief appearance of Pete Davidson, whose character was completely unnecessary in a scene that was clearly supposed to provide comedy, but only annoyed everyone in the theater. So many new characters added and not enough spotlight for those who were already there.
For a movie about family, they sure like to forget about the immediate one. Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Dom’s sister, only appears for two short scenes and Letty Ortiz-Toretto (Michelle Rodriguez), Dom’s wife, has considerably less screen time. While I get that this movie focuses more on Dom and Little B Toretto (Leo Abelo Perry), the familiarity between the characters we already know is gone. Rather, the writers seem to try and force it onto the new and unknown characters and we are simply supposed to believe it.
The Fast and Furious movies are increasingly known for insane action scenes that defy every law of physics ever created. Jumping out of a plane with a car? No problem. Shooting a car into outer space? A regular Wednesday. So, stopping a large bomb from annihilating the entire city of Rome with only a few cars or driving a car down an exploding dam was child’s play for this film. While certain scenes do have you question your sanity as to how these characters are still alive and what their cars are made out of, it is comparatively tamer than the previous installments.
The franchise is most known for Dom’s famous family lines. This movie takes that and turns it around, turning Dom’s family into his weakness rather than strength. Overplayed as it is, Dante Reyes’ character brings new wind.
Every single bad guy throughout the recent movies was either threatening Dom’s family or avenging their own. While Dante Reyes’ motives are the same, he took it to an entirely new level of planning and execution. Momoa’s acting is incredible and he portrays the character playing jump rope with calculative genius and an insane sociopath a little too well. Truly, aside from the nostalgic element the movie pushed, he was the most enjoyable thing that came out of it.
The highlight of the movie was one of the ending scenes when Letty Toretto and Cipher escape Antarctica and reunite with Giselle (Gal Gadot), who was believed to be dead since “Fast and Furious 6”, and, considering she was my favorite character, I was overjoyed.
While all of the previous movies were pretty cut and dry when it came to the climax, “Fast X” left us with a really dramatic cliffhanger. After Jakob Toretto’s (John Cena) sacrifice to buy Dom and Little B time to escape, and the betrayal of Aimes which resulted in the presumed death of Han (Sung Kang), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), Tej Parker (Ludacris) and Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), we are left with a shot of Dom and Little B under an exploding dam with nowhere to go. However, as someone who has watched and obsessed over these movies for the majority of my teen years, I have some ideas for where the plot can go.
The number one rule of this franchise is that unless we have seen a body, no one is truly dead. It was true for Letty, Han and now Giselle. So even though Jakob went out in a fiery explosion, I wouldn’t put it past the writers to bring him back somehow. Same goes for everybody else, and considering that Shaw disappeared after his brief scene, it is not out of the question that he might make the big save once again.
Overall, I really cannot hate this movie. Is it far from what the original idea was? Yes, but it does well to play on the nostalgia and fills the awkwardness with some funny one-liners and Momoa’s acting. I could write an entire separate thing about him and his character alone.
Is it getting boring, repetitive and unrealistic? Also yes, but it’s building on top of an entire large fanbase that will love these movies no matter what, simply for the lore. I loved the lore and the possibilities this movie opened for the future. Would I recommend this for someone who hasn’t watched the previous ones? Absolutely not.
