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Photo from Icon Vs. Icon
There are days when I had enough of staying home all day. I’m miserable, and the few seconds of a warm embrace from outside aren’t plenty. So, I get my butt off the couch to go on a drive with the silver bullet, my Nissan Altima. I get into that fine piece of Japanese manufacturing and head to the nearest dirt road, where I speed up at high speeds. As I’m zooming through dirt patches, I yank the wheel aggressively to flip me in the air in a 360 spiral, which spun me around in that beauty of a machine for seconds. After my little cavalcade, I continued to floor it until I could pull another stunt in my car. If you haven’t guessed, I live life a quarter mile at a time.
After nine films in The Fast and The Furious franchise, it makes sense they’ll start making things exciting and eye-popping. No, I’m talking about insane feats of wife-beater leading man Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto or his brother Jakob Toretto played by; I apologize I couldn’t see the actor who played him. By his voice, I can tell he’s snarky. What I’m talking about is they went to space!
When I saw the trailer, I was thinking, how will they include this in the plot?, being it’s a Fast and Furious film, it’s added the most ridiculous of ways. The fast crew threw logic out the window, I’m afraid.
Photo from Den of Geek
Speaking of logic, the only rational character in the film, Roman, played by Tyrese Gibson, starts wondering how they can survive such insane missions and come out with no scratches. He asked if they’re in invincible (yes, they’re superheroes). I agreed with him; I could’ve screamed at the projector screen, but I Remembered, logic and physics don’t apply here. I better calm down before the audience throws popcorn at me.
The stunts are incredible; Justin Lin and company film amazing feats such as the rope car swing, magnets mania, and the space car. I enjoyed the rope car swing stunt. Dominic Toretto and Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez, while riding a Mustang at high velocities, Dominic Toretto clings to a rope with only grapple attached to the bottom of the car as they soar past the ocean floor, where they crash and flip without scratches (invincible).
Photo from Metacritic
Without the incredible stunts, we have a narrative about siblings Dominic and Jakob Toretto and their pity feud. You see this feud through flashbacks which get distracting and ruins the plot. I enjoyed the flashbacks, but shorting them down would suffice.
We have the villain, Otto, played by Thue Ersted Rasmussen, who went to cliche villain school. Mr. Cliche gets help from Cipher, played by the stunning Charlize Theron, who helps Otto even though Cipher can control him and use him for her schemes.
She helps him because she knows those superhuman fast crew would stop him.
Overall, it’s a fun film with plenty of enticing action set pieces, but they get bogged down by an overuse of flashbacks and a choppy narrative. No matter what Fast and Furious does, we’ll watch for the physically impossible stunts. It’s those stunts keeping the Fast and Furious crew young and as a family–a family who rides or dies no matter what.