Fast 9: The Fast Saga: It's Time to Slow Down

At the time I'm writing this review I've seen F9 twice in IMAX (with two different friends). Why would I waste money to do so? The answer is quite simple: Jurassic Park. You see, next summer Jurassic World Dominion comes out and to get people excited, the director announced that there would be a five minute first look attached exclusively to IMAX showings of F9. Like a complete moron, I took the bait. The footage was amazing and I'm pumped to see the movie. I can confidently say that the first look was the best part of watching F9. Take that for what you will.

Before I really get into the review, I would like to explain my history with this franchise. The first one I saw was the seventh back in 2015. I enjoyed it enough and the tribute to Paul Walker at the end was beautiful. Fast forward two years and the ninth one is released. It was...um, a movie. A month or so ago I watched the original for the first time and it left me thinking: What the hell happened? I'm not overly fond of these movies. I get they're supposed to be stupid, but, for me, it's too much. It completely baffles me that this is a multi-billion dollar franchise. I guess I was in the minority, well until recently. I watched a trailer for the new one with a friend who really likes these movies and even he said, "C'mon." So fasten your seatbelts folks, I'm about to get a little furious (I do not apologize for ANY of the puns I make in this review).

Fast 9: The Fast Saga is directed by Justin Lin and stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Ludacris, and Tyrese Gibson. Dom Toretto (Diesel) and his wife Letty (Rodriguez) are living a peaceful life. However, once it's revealed that Dom has a younger brother (Cena) who is working with the cyber-criminal Cipher (Charlize Theron), Toretto must reunite with his team to stop him. With all of that out of the way, let's get started!

In case you couldn't tell, I wasn't very fond of this movie. However, there is fun to be had. I really liked the chemistry that the team has. Pretty much everyone looks like they're having fun. They bounce off of each other very well and seem like a genuine group of friends. When they're all on-screen together, that's when the movie is at its best. It kind of reminded me of my friends where we just grill each other constantly. Some of the banter is so good, I was wondering how much was improv. The humor also works really well too. Roman (Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) were hysterical together. They constantly just roast each other. Luckily they have a lot of screentime together. The movie isn't afraid to poke fun at itself either. There's one scene where Roman is genuinely proposing that they're invincible because nothing ever happens to them. At this point in the franchise I wouldn't be surprised. This leads me to the action sequences, which I also really liked. The cars look neat and everything sounds great. Yes these scenes are ridiculous, but oddly enough, I enjoyed it. When I say ridiculous, I mean ridiculous. Not even twenty minutes into the movie, these guys are driving over landmines and walk (drive?) away completely unscathed. Their logic? If you can get to 80 miles an hour you should be able to miss the blast. Yes, that's what we're dealing with here. The best part is that this is tame compared to the rest of the film. I mean, at one point, they strap rockets to a car and go to space (this is kind of a spoiler but it's in the trailers). What made the whole experience even better was that there was guy in our theater absolutely dying of laughter. I don't know why I enjoyed the stupidity so much. Maybe I've made peace with it or maybe it has to do with the fact that the rest of the movie stinks.

I'd like to apologize in advance if this section is a little messy. That's because, well, so is this movie. I mentioned earlier that pretty much everyone looks like they're having fun. There is one person who's an outlier though: Vin Diesel. Full disclosure: I don't think he's a very good actor, except when he's playing Groot, the Iron Giant, or the brief amount of time he was in Saving Private Ryan. He looked absolutely miserable and just mumbled the entire time. There were maybe two or three times where his character showed anything resembling a personality. I honestly believe he's the only one taking these movies seriously. At one point he yelled at John Cena, "I SHOWED YOU MERCY" and it was meant to be an emotional sequence, but I couldn't keep myself together. What's even funnier is that a few days ago, I read an article where Diesel was talking about his beef with Dwayne Johnson in the previous movie. He said, "My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be" (to read the rest of the interview and for more context click here.) Vin, buddy, you are the last person who should be talking about performances. What really bugs me is that he's a producer on this franchise, so he has clout. A major part of this movie is the relationship between Dom and his brother, Jakob. Cena does an ok job in the role, but it's nothing to write home about. They try to flesh their relationship out through flashbacks, but the actors playing young Dom and Jakob are terrible. It's hard to delve too deeply into this aspect of the movie because it ventures into spoiler territory. This whole relationship actually highlights my real problem with the movie: it's a high budget soap opera. It's so focused on Dom's issues (probably just to inflate Diesel's ego) that the movie falls apart because of it. Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, slight spoilers ahead, there's a scene where Dom falls from a walkway into a pool of water filled with concrete. Here he has a flashback to several moments in time, including one where he wasn't even present. It's psychotic. I think that's why I enjoyed the stupid stunts so much. At least with those I was getting a positive reaction (I was laughing at how asinine it was). The soap opera segments were just awful garbage that has me dreading the next two, TWO, installments. Because of the focus on the Toretto family, the other characters suffer as a result. A huge marketing strategy for this movie was showing that Han (Sung Kang), who was killed in Fast 6, is actually alive. The movie completely fumbles this because he does absolutely nothing the whole movie. He isn't introduced until the end of the second act. All he does pretty much is explain how he survived (which is a pretty flimsy explanation) and then the movie just forgets about him. The whole #JusticeforHan thing leads nowhere. Another character who does nothing is Cipher and her stupid haircut. She is useless through the whole thing. It felt like she was added through reshoots. I mentioned earlier that this movie isn't afraid to poke fun at itself. I was only able to tolerate that up to a certain scene. My breaking point was when Tej and Roman are sitting in the rocket car heading to space and the former says, "The numbers don't lie." Well if the numbers don't lie Tej, you and your team should all be dead. Maybe they were talking about box office numbers. I get that the movie was winking at the audience, but at this point it closed both eyes and crashed into a tree. Another thing that held this movie back was the CG on the humans. You could easily tell when someone was fake jumping from a car. It took me out of the film. The final nail in the coffin was the movie's length. It's almost two and half hours long. There's no reason for it to be. So much could've been cut. It's not a Fast movie either until family is mentioned and boy do they talk about it here. If you took a shot every time someone mentioned the f-word, you'd die of alcohol poisoning.

Before I wrap this review up, I'm gonna do something a little different. As I mentioned earlier, I saw this movie twice. The second time I saw it was with an old friend of mine named Jonathan. He wanted to help with this review, so I'll pass it off to him.

Hello, I am Jonathan, friend of Ben's for sixteen years. This weekend was absolutely horrendous. Between quitting my job and drama online, I was at my wits end. I went to see F9 (well, really just the Jurassic World: Dominion teaser in the beginning) with my best friend. I expected the movie to, at the very least, be a fun escape from the drama of my life but instead it was quite dull. There were scenes of absolute ludicrousness such as Vin Diesel using the cable of a disintegrated bridge to swing across like some kind of metallic Tarzan or them going to space. They each made me either sigh or laugh out loud in an awkward kind of way that brought me no pleasure. When I laughed, it was at how embarassed I was at the sheer stupidity before me. To be honest, I was bored most of the time. I feel bad for making Ben sit through this a second time. (5/10- Cats was better).

Thanks for that Jon. I actually forgot about the Tarzan swing. To wrap everything up F9: The Fast Saga is a car crash of a movie. The action sequences are ridiculous (in a fun way) and most of the cast seems like they are having fun together. The problem is that this movie seems to be at war with itself. It doesn't know if it wants to be stupid action movie or just a terrible soap opera. Vin Diesel holds this entire thing back with cringy performance and whole Dom/Jakob conflict is eh. As a result of Vin Diesel stroking his ego, characters like Han are pushed to the side. While the movie isn't afraid to poke fun at itself, this can only be taken so far. The cherry on top is that this movie is an unforgiving 2 hours and 25 minutes. It's time for this family to slow down. If I were to rate it, I'd give F9 a 5 out of 10. Unlike Jon, however, I don't think Cats is better. Also, be sure to stick through the credits a little bit because there's a mid-credits scene.