Full disclosure? I’ve only seen the first Fast and/or Furious movie from 2001, but I must ask—what the hell happened with this series since then? Like, what in the emmer-effing, essing, effing eff happened? I thought these movies were about a cop who got Point Break’d by a car thief/mechanic and then they stole cars and stuff while racing? That first one was fun, even, but it turns out in Fast X from director Louis Leterrier—whom you likely know from movies like Now You See Me and The Transporter—the principal characters from eight movies I didn’t see now work for some kind of clandestine agency (called, get this, The Agency) and the things they must do are so absurdly over-the-top in the least fun ways that...y’know what? We should’ve sent a fan to review this, maybe.

In Fast X, Dom Toretto (a particularly wooden Vin Diesel) and the gang (people, I assume, from previous Fast films, such as Michelle Rodriguez and Charlize Theron) run afoul of this guy Dante (Jason Momoa, whose portrayal of mental illness is disappointing and lazily based in disaffected Joker-esque erraticisms) whose father they killed in a previous movie. He’s back now and attacks Dom’s family, which is the one thing everyone knows Dom hates. So the crew jetsets around the planet hacking stuff and driving fast and firing guns and driving some more until your head spins. Then Brie Larson appears to say, “You’ll never get away with this, bad guys!” followed by John Cena (who is way too good an actor to do this crap) and Jason Statham, furrowed brow and all (he belongs here). Then a car falls out of a plane. Then you nod off in the theater for about 15 minutes, but come to just in time for the cliffhanger conclusion you don’t care about but that makes you wonder if you’ll ever see the sun again. Then you’ll wish the new Spider-Man cartoon had come out this weekend like you’d thought it would.

Anyway, Fast X is stupid, even by the specially-made extra low bar by which these films deserve to be evaluated; and it is loooong. Too long. It’s long and stupid and bad. It’s not even fun in an escapist way like John Wick, nor bombastic like the recent and pretty enjoyable Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Instead, it’s written badly (thanks for nothing Dan Mazeau, Justin Lin and Gary Scott Thompson), its actors act badly (all the lines are like, “I took him down and I’ll take you down!” or, like, “I did it to protect you, John Cena’s nephew!”), its music and cinematography are forgettable and even its car-fu-ballet nonsense that finds people driving up walls or out-driving explosions or turning kayaks into planes (not kidding) plays so terribly that you almost want to call up Rita Moreno and Helen Mirren (they’re both in this thing somehow!) and ask them if the producers just straight up drove dump trucks full of money to their houses. C’mon Vin Diesel, you’re Groot, bro. Try a little, jeeze.

2

+That one car cannon is kind of cool

-As boring and drawn out as it is badly acted

Fast X

Directed by Leterrier

With Diesel, Rodriguez, Momoa, Cena, Mirren, Moreno

Regal, Violet Crown, PG-13, 141 min.