Fast X (AKA Fast Ten Your Seatbelts)

 

I don't know what to say about these movies that has not already been said by me and a thousand others. "The Fast and Furious" series has gotten bigger and more preposterous with each entry, and the connection to reality disappeared around the fifth one in the series. They are extremely well made, over the top action films, that you can enjoy the heck out of, as long as you are willing to give up any sense of reality. The physics are silly, the characters are cartoons, the stunts are Rube Goldberg sequences that will make you want to go back to your childhood and play "Mousetrap". Every movie has the same tropes in it somewhere, there is a racing scene, shots of girls wiggling their hind ends to hip hop songs at the race scene, and then there are the character beats. Vin Diesel's Dom gets serious and says he has to go it alone, the team mocks that idea, Letty defies the notion, and they all end up working together. There will be new characters introduced, usually with some family connections. A Secondary character will return to be sacrificed at some point in the story, and a dead character will be resurrected. There is also usually a double cross somewhere ion the story, and/or enemies come together for a common purpose. 

"Fast X" or "Fast Ten Your Seatbelts" as my friend Mark Hofmeyer would call it) has all of those moments. Like a Roger Moore 007 film, it checks off the essentials, tosses them together and then gets by on it's stars. Michelle Rodriguez continues to glower at everyone who might be an opponent, and if there is a woman to be taken down, she will get the sequence that requires that ass whopping. Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris will do their Abbot and Costello routine, fall out for 30 seconds and then bond again. They are the comic relief most of the time, although there are other characters that do get to put some comedic spin on what they are doing. The characters of Han and Ramsey are along for the ride on this one, but they have almost nothing to do for most of the story. Charlize Theron likewise, is in the story, but the segment with her and Letty is mostly shoehorned in to give them something to do while the rest of the action is taking place. 

The best thing that the makers of this franchise have done, is introduce new characters on a regular basis. Those characters can come back and be part of the action in the next films. Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham and Jon Cena all started out as antagonists to Dom's team, and end up working with them in later films. Helen Mirren is not given a lot to do, but when she shows up, she classes up the film a bit. I try to avoid spoilers in my essays so be careful with this next bit, although anyone who has followed the series knows that it is true. Characters die in the films, but they all seem to come back somehow. We get a couple of those moments and the film itself is a bit of a tipoff because of how it ends.

Fresh faces keep things lively in the eleven films so far (which includes the Hobbs and Shaw spinoff). Jon Cena was the anti-Dom in the last film, and now he is back as a semi-autonomous surrogate father for several scenes. He seems to be having a great time and I enjoyed his sequences more than most of the others. However, it is clearly Jason Momoa who is having the most fun with this movie. His character is flamboyantly evil, and Momoa plays him with gusto and panache. The character is written as a stylized villain, and the actor embraces the character the same way that John Lithgow took on Lord John Whorfin in the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension. His costumes, hair, eyebrows and voice all scream "I'm the Bad Guy!! Pay Attention to Me!". It is exactly right, even the use of the extended arms in a crucified like position as a visual exclamation point that the character has a habit of posing in, feel like a comic book bad guy should be. The retcon sequence that brings Dante into the story is not as elaborate as the one that got Cena's Jacob in the last film, but it was managed well and it works. 

The one new wrinkle this film gives us is that it ends on a cliffhanger moment. All of our heroes appear to be doomed and the bad guy has won. There are several strings that you can pull at to come up with more story. For example Brie Larson could find her Dad Kurt Russell and start a new hunt on the villain. Jason Statham is on his way to protect his Mama from the bad guy, so that can be a path to follow. And Letty's new alliance with Theron's Cipher has been set up with a twist that I saw coming three movies ago. Regardless of all that potential, I am confident that the dead will rise, the strings will be tied up, and if Dante, Momoa's character is not sent to hell, he will become an anti-hero ally in entry number 12. I heard they were going to stop after the next one, but I also thought Han was dead.