The Fast & Furious franchise reached its pinnacle of sublime absurdity with Fast Five. This movie brought together Dom Toretto, Brian O'Conner, and a bunch of crazy rascals for an exciting heist story reminiscent of Ocean's Eleven, but with the addition of high-speed cars. The climax of the film involved Dom and Brian attaching a massive bank vault to their Dodge Chargers and dragging it through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, using it as a makeshift wrecking ball against their pursuers. While subsequent films in the franchise have tried to outdo the sheer joy of this moment (like the parachuting cars in Furious 7), recent entries have struggled to outdo themselves, resulting in an exhausting feeling.
Fast X seems to recognize that Fast Five represents the pinnacle of the franchise, as it begins by reintroducing a supervillain who is the son of a previous antagonist. The film also goes back to the heist sequence, aiming to recapture the dizzying excess and cartoonishly destructive violence that defined the series' best moments, leaving behind the grim tone of movies like The Fate of the Furious. It may be outrageously silly, but there's an undeniably vulgar charm to a movie that nearly blew up the Vatican as a mere warm-up exercise.
Director: Louis Leterrier
Writers: Dan Mazeau, Justin Lin, Gary Scott Thompson
Stars: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham
After briefly delving into the obligatory exploration of "family," which has become a series staple akin to James Bond's martini ordering, Fast X quickly establishes a multi-film story arc centered on Dante Reyes (played by Jason Momoa), the vengeful son of Rio boss Herman Reyes. Armed with his father's untold wealth and a sadistic streak, Dante seeks not only to kill Dom, but also to subject him and his associates to immense suffering for his personal amusement. He cares little about the collateral damage inflicted on the city, as he lures the team into a fake agency mission in Rome and detonates a bomb housed inside a massive rolling casing that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake, similar to the iconic manhunt. of rocks. in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is only through the heroic efforts of Dom and his team that the Pope is saved.
From there, Fast X proceeds to assemble a sprawling cast of characters that has expanded over the course of ten movies, in part because the series is known for avoiding permadeaths. Thus, familiar faces like Charlize Theron as cyberterrorist Cipher, John Cena as Dom's long-lost brother Jakob, Scott Eastwood as dashing lawman Little Nobody, and Helen Mirren as Queenie Shaw (Deckard Shaw's formidable mother, played by Jason Statham) return. Additionally, new additions include Brie Larson as Mr. Nobody's daughter and Rita Moreno in a purely ceremonial role as a "grandmother" connected to the Toretto family. Juggling these numerous narrative threads, legacy characters, and new faces, the film frantically navigates through half a dozen subplots simultaneously.
Director Louis Leterrier, known for his part in lackluster blockbusters like The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans and Edward Norton's Now You See Me, takes over from Justin Lin and channels his closest style to Transporter 2, which follows being one of the most outstanding projects of Jason Statham. vehicles. Leterrier's camera pirouettes wildly around the action scenes (he seems as enamored of the aerial shots as Max Ophüls was of the tracking shots), embracing the absurdity of the story as much as possible, while leaving the physics behind. from suspense to the Mission: Impossible franchise. . Dom and his team approach his missions like they have all the cheat codes in an arcade game.
Fast X's unrestrained approach runs into a bit of a misstep with Momoa's portrayal of Dante. Momoa's portrayal of Dante as a prim androgynous agent of chaos resembles Nicolas Cage in Face/Off and Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, but veers awkwardly into archetypal gay assassin territory. In a series that celebrates the bravery of tough characters, Dante represents a feminized reactionary menace. The main problem, however, lies in Momoa's lack of talent and charisma that either Cage or Depp possess, hindering his ability to completely dominate the screen. While it may not be as monotonous as Theron's whispery performance in the previous two entries, Momoa's portrayal veers in the opposite direction, plotting the apocalypse while sporting pigtails, nail polish, and a collection of half-buttoned satin shirts.
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