3-2-1: Fast X

2023, d. Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) - IMAX theatre

The Plot 100:
142 minutes of sensory overload. Aquaman, who really was in Fast 5 the whole time, really, does revenge. But he doesn't want to just destroy the "Family", he wants Riddick to suffer...by destroying the "Family". Snake Plisskin is MIA from the "Agency", Jack Reacher has taken over, placing the “Family” on the "Agency's" most wanted list, but Captain Marvel is there to undermine him. Baby Boy,Ludacris, Missandei and Han are doing their thing. Girlfight gets captured, makes frenemies with Atomic Blonde. XXX’s off on his own doing his thing. Peacemaker, plays funcle. It ends with cliffhangers, I guess? 

3-2-1:
3 Good:

(1) Big. Loud. Dumb. Sometimes, you just want to escape whatever is going on in your life. Sometimes you really need an excuse to tune out the voices and drown out the noise. Fast X is loud enough to drown out any noise, and it's so dumb that you absolutely *must* shut your brain off.  And it's big enough, meaning they sunk a hundreds of millions of dollars into wanton chaos and destruction for a nearly 2 1/2 hour movie that never really lets up on it, because none of the story in this film or film series is ever going to sustain the audience's attention for more than 30 seconds at a time without some engine revving or explosion happening. It's a big, loud, dumbass movie, and it's really not trying to be anything other than that, and that's why it's good. Your mileage may vary.
(2) The End. Oh my god, the ending is so stupid. The inspiration for this two-part finale to the Fast Saga was obviously Avengers: Infinity War as they try to cram as many existing characters as well as a whole bunch of new ones into the framework of an otherwise bare bones story idea. The ending is supposed to be a downer/suspenseful ending (did they just die? Did they just come back from the dead? How are they possibly going to get out of this one?) but it's some real weak tea, '66 Batman "see you next week" kind of plotting that took some real cojones to spend 140+ minutes leading into. It's seriously one of the most ambitiously stupid or stupidly ambitious moves a film has made in a long time. I'm think it's all terrible and I loved it.  Especially if you stop and think about what happens if another one doesn't get made. The hubris is hilarious. Do I genuinely enjoy this movie or is it just ironic enjoyment, and is there a difference?
(3) The players. With a franchise cast of regular players already a couple dozen deep they just keep adding more. Alan Ritchson, Brie Larson, Daniela Melchior, Pete Davidson, Rita Moreno, and everyone has a family tie to somebody else. It's always all about family, and it makes me giddy how they manage to shoehorn the theme in over and over and over again. They keep bringing people back too, like Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren and Cardi B who you would be forgiven for forgetting that they were even part of this franchise. And of course there's some surprises saved for the very end.  It's like those over-stuffed star-fueled disaster movies of the 1970's, but with espionage and cars and razor-thin character work. It's Roger Corman movies if they had 200 million dollar budgets. It's really hard to be angry with these earnestly dumb movies.

2 Great:

(1) Jason Momoa. I sometime think Jason Momoa isn't, well, a great actor. Since he popped out of the Khal Drogo role, he's basically been a gigantic, handsome slab of meat with incredible tresses and a lot of charm. I've seen a lot of roles I've liked him in but at the same time I'm still wondering "Is he a good actor?" Aquaman, still DC's biggest success(?!?) kind of succeeded in spite of him being in the lead. He was surrounded by better actors there. It's kind of the opposite here. When he's sharing the screen with Vin Diesel or Ludacris or a checked-out Michelle Rodriguez, he's really got a leg up. Being the new guy, and the villain, he just unzips and goes balls out (metaphorically, we don't actually see his balls...I think).

As I watched Momoa traipse (oh, he traipses, honey) around on screen, taking wardrobe change after wardrobe change, providing dainty flourishes to his peppery language, and just being a total slice of spiced ham, I couldn't help but wonder...what is this performance? It's definitely in the gender-fluid, sexually-ambiguous realm, played with giddy menace, winding with a sort of a maniacal Dean Pelton vibe. And then it hit me... it's the Joker. 

Ah, but which Joker, you ask? Jack Nicholson? Cesar Romero? Heath Ledger? It's ALL OF THEM. Every Joker ever is employed in Momoa's gleeful performance. Hints of Mark Hamill's cartoon joker, touches of Joaquin Phoenix, even some of the dead-eyed lunacy of Jared Leto. It's super fun and basically the draw of the movie.

(2) John Cena, the fun uncle. In the last movie, F9, John Cena debuted as racially ambiguous (but confirmed definitely part-Latinx in this film, with Rita Moreno playing his Abuelita) Domenic Toretto's very, very white brother, Jakob. It was never mentioned before that Dom had a brother (besides his brother from another mother, Paul Walker's Brian) so the shoehorning of him in was pretty hoary, and positioning him as a petty, jealous, angry villain who is just desperate for Dom's attention and easily redeemable was pretty dorky all things considered. You kind of forget he even exists in the Fast Franchise until he just pops up.  Cena's such a ridiculous looking guy to begin with...like he's as wide as he is tall, with a face full of soft edges that makes him much easier to accept in a comedic role than a serious one. Cena has done some really crappy films in his career, but also some great work, and I feel like having spent much of the past four years with James Gunn on Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, he's really grown as a performer, with a shamelessness and gusto that translates well on screen. His appearance here, he gets to be physical at first, but most of the work he does with Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry) is just charming as fuck, and Cena, once again checks his ego at the door. There are a lot of little pairings of actors in this film where the chemistry really works (Rodriguez and Theron, Diesel and Mirren, Bridges and Gibson) but I think this pairing worked the best, and I could see a Lone Wolf and Cub/Mandalorian-style comedy-action series with Cena and a child really working well.

"Family"

1 Bad: 
I'm not big into the "Fast Franchise" lore. I've seen most of the films once (Fast Five two or three times, as it's easily the best) and they're all stupid and enjoyable but keeping track of any of the continuity is just. not. worth it. You can tell these are scripts written with zero forethought and barely any immediate thought. They're not really thought through, they're just an action RPG brought to life with dice rolls deciding whether any of the action sequences work, not physics or science or the laws of nature.  Anyway, yeah, haven't the "Family" been working for the "Agency" since, like, Fast 5, or, like, a decade or so? They're contractors, sure, but isn't the "Agency" the good guys?

So, when Alan Ritchson's Almes takes over (because Kurt Russel's Mr. Nobody has apparently done one of his "famous" disappearing acts) and labels the "Family" as wanted fugitives, why then is it just perfectly acceptable to just start shooting "Agency" goons in the head, stabbing them in the neck, slicing open femoral arteries, exploding them, running them over with cars, knocking buildings down on them? I know the "Family" didn't start out on the right side of the law, regardless, they could have been friends with any of these faceless goons, but no, without asking any questions or looking under the masks at the humans beneath, they just start bodyslamming them through floors and spear diving them through walls.

I basically shut my brain off for the film and just went along for the ride, but, this one aspect really bothered me.

META:

not yet family

So, days before release, he-whose-head-looks-like-a-thumb announced, somewhere, that the epic 2-part finale to the Fast Franchise was now going to be a trilogy.

As much as I proclaim to love the dumbness of this series, turning whatever story this is into a trilogy seems both terrible and unsustainable. The plot of this film was threadbare as is, with literally no characters arcs happening (maybe Cypher learns something?). Momoa's rampage of revenge has basically led to the "Family" being on its last legs, but of course there's an easy out for everything, and nobody ever dies in this series, and every bad guy seems to become part of the "Family" eventually anyway, so what are we even doing here?

Hopefully FF11 wraps in a lot of the Hobbes and Shaw cast (would love Vanessa Kirby to return...for...reasons) and we can maybe welcome Hobbes' now probably-adult daughter into the fold. Plus Shaw's brother, Luke Evans, still hasn't been seen since 6, so he needs to come back, and those goofs from Tokyo Drift (Lil Bow Wow and Lucas Black) need to reappear again too.  Of course either Mr. Nobody is coming to the rescue, or it was he who was kidnapped setting a lot of the dumb plot of this film in motion. But I don't really even see 2 more hours coming out of Fast X (it seems like a half hour resolution is needed at best), nevermind another 4 or 5.  But then, this is a series about excess, and pushing limits, and everyone coming back from the dead...so why not the bad guys, like Idris Elba, or Djimon Hounsu,  or Dom's baby mama Elsa Pataki, or even Vince.  Remember Vince? No? Me neither. What about if Dom's dead dad was the bad guy this whole time and they try to tie this all together, Spectre style? That would phenawfulmenel.

Behind the scenes there's been a lot of talk over the years about how Diesel's ego has taken over the series, and for all the talk of "family" he sees himself as the sole creative driving force. Justin Lin, whose filmmaking sensibilities are largely responsible for the franchise having become the juggernaut it is, and was planned to be the director of the two-part finale, was driven out of the director's chair early in the shooting of this production, presumably over creative differences with Diesel. It's a lot less public than the fued between Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, but both are telling on what it's like working with him. It's also telling how much of the film Diesel spends apart from the main cast (which, besides the opening scenes, is all of it). Diesel is the driving force of the series but he's also the burden which the series must carry. He's the star, but biggest presence, but also the weakest performer. Dom seemingly has like a dozen lines of dialogue the whole film, despite dom-inating the screentime, which is probably for the best, since Diesel's emotionless performance leads to such a back-of-the-throat, low growl as to be borderline inaudible at this point. 

This was the first F&F movie I've seen in theatres since Fast 5, and I do have to say that the experience in theatre is so much better than watching from home. Big, loud, dumb, expensive movies are built for it. I can't say if the quality of the film is improved or if it just winds up being a better time when you've committed yourself to this one thing.