F9: The Fast Saga – Film Review

Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is living a quiet life off the grid with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his son, but they know that danger always lurks just over the peaceful horizon. This time, that threat forces Dom to confront the sins of his past to save those he loves most. His crew soon comes together to stop a world-shattering plot by the most skilled assassin and high-performance driver they’ve ever encountered — Dom’s forsaken brother Jakob (John Cena).

Never in a million years did I ever think I was going to end up binge-watching the entire Fast and Furious film franchise – just a week ago being an eight movie series that promised more insanity with each passing installment – and never in a million years did I ever expect to love them as much as I ended up doing.

For years, I had heard so many people bash this franchise and say how horrible it is, so when I first started watching it beginning with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, I made sure to lower my expectations. I didn’t want to hype myself up for a movie that was going to suck. But by the time the credits started rolling on screen, I found myself thinking “Uh… what was so bad about that?”.

Admittedly, the follow-up, 2 Fast 2 Furious was rather terrible but every installment in the series after that second movie I ended up really getting a kick out of. Still to this day my favorite is Fast Five, the only film in the saga to date that actually dared to be smart and have believable action sequences while also maintaining the fun and wonder that many audiences adore about this series of films.

On the surface, the Fast and Furious movies could’ve been genuinely boring. The first couple of entries are essentially just films that follow a bunch of muscular guys that drive extremely fancy, fast cars and race each other for monetary gain. After a while, it’s kind of hard to be entertained by watching the same old – a couple of people doing a street race and somebody winning? That’s just not going to work out in the long run.

Justin Lin’s Fast Five was truly the first movie in the franchise that understood a change needed to be made in order to shake up this series. And although the later installments (Fast & Furious 6, Furious 7, and The Fate of the Furious) got extremely silly with their action sequences, it’s something that I’ve come to love.

At this point, the filmmakers simply do not care about whether or not the action sequences unfolding on screen are believable – they just want to make sure that they’re fresh, fun, and outlandishly crazy with each passing scene and I have to say that they’re doing a hell of a good job succeeding in that department, and it’s never been better depicted than in F9 – a movie that has some of the most bonkers and unbelievable action scenes I have ever witnessed.

There is literally not a single action sequence in F9 that is plausible. An early scene in the film shows a car going across a clifftop and driving across a rickety bridge that would have easily collapsed but, of course, in this film it didn’t.

One of the most absurd yet wickedly exciting devices the characters use in this film is this strange magnetic device that, when activated, attracts anything that’s made of metal and usually, these objects go flying to the air. So, as you can probably expect, a lot of vehicles get attracted to this magnet and it causes them to go flying into the air in insanely ridiculous ways.

If you are going to see F9 you have to understand just how zany it is. As soon as you think about this movie in a literal sense, you might end up hating it or, if you don’t hate it, you’ll probably find yourself shaking your head and just laughing at the absurdity of it all. The action in the Fast and Furious franchise has always been ridiculous and fun, but F9 truly knocks you on your behind.

By the time the film ultimately came to a close and the end credits came on screen, I felt as though every one of my senses had been attacked, but I wasn’t going to complain. I’m not joking around when I say that the final forty-five minutes of this film is legitimately non-stop action.

I absolutely adored sitting in an IMAX theatre with incredible audio and a massive screen, watching Dominic Toretto and his crew getting in wild scenarios, and thinking in my head “There’s no way that’s going to happen”, and sure enough, it happens. The scenes just get crazier and crazier in all the best ways. I honestly don’t know how they’re going to make the action even more ridiculous in the upcoming tenth and eleventh installment because this is where it’s at.

Something else you need to know about F9 before you see it is that the acting really isn’t the best and to be truthful, none of these movies necessarily feature terrific acting – but they don’t need to. I will admit though, there is something undeniably entertaining and endearing about watching Vin Diesel driving around and beating the daylights out of some villains.

Diesel has a sense of charm that’s genuinely hard to put into words. He’s not a great actor and he is basically the same character in each installment with little to no growth but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t love watching his character wreak some havoc in every entry.

One of the new additions to the cast this time around is none other than John Cena. Before I even went to go see F9 I was fully aware that Cena wasn’t going to deliver a groundbreaking performance. All I wanted was for him to be a complete badass and serve as a fun antagonist for this story and he certainly did.

There’s an indescribable feeling of joy watching Diesel and Cena portraying brothers and getting into fights with one another. It’s so over-the-top and goofy that I just loved every second of it. I can honestly say the same thing about F9 as a whole.

Even the scene in which rapper Cardi B appears – while absolutely a shameless cameo that added literally nothing to the overall story – had some strange charm to it. F9 is one of those movies that, if not existing in a popular film franchise and it was an unheard-of film, you would describe the events of what occurred in it and your friends simply wouldn’t believe you. It all just sounds so crazy to the point where you have to see it to believe it. So I encourage you to go see F9 – it’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s goofy. It’s over-the-top. And I loved it.