Fast X (2023)
1/4
One of the things I love about the Fast & Furious saga is how easy they make it for movie critics to criticize. From the ridiculous, over-the-top acting of franchise lead Vin Diesel to its badly written and overproduced screenplays, the 10 films are just loud, nonsensical messes that, frankly, I’m getting tired of seeing drive through our movie screens.
This is especially true when it comes to the latest instalment, Fast X.
Despite all of the incoherent gobbledygook that’s in this movie, there are some things that I liked. This movie holds the title as being the eighth most expensive movie ever made (tenth, adjusted for inflation), with a budget of a whopping $340 million, and I well say this: every dollar was wisely spent, for what it is. The action sequences and fight scenes are coherently filmed; you can see everything and none of it appears shaky or disjointed in any way.
Every returning actor in this movie is basically playing the same character they’ve been playing for the last 10 years, but the new villain Dante Reyes, played by Jason Momoa, is really funny and succeeds in producing the best Fast & Furious villain we’ve ever had in this franchise. He’s this franchise’s version of The Joker, which is really saying something.
Unfortunately, there are major, canyon-size plot holes in this movie. The main villain’s plan makes no sense because it requires him to be either a psychic or a time traveller because he somehow knows everything that’s going to happen Also, this movie has twists and turns that have no basis in reality. Good guys turn bad and bad guys turn good for zero reason. Characters who clearly died in a previous movie show up out of nowhere with no explanation at all.
When it all comes down to it, yes, the action is good, and Momoa gifts the audience with the best villain this franchise will ever have, but, unsurprisingly, Fast X is a head-splitting jumbled mess of a movie which, by quality standards at least, mirrors the other nine movies that came before it exactly.
Universal and Diesel say this is the beginning of the end of the Fast saga.
One can only hope.