How do you review a movie like F9? At this point in the series, if you buy a ticket, you know what you’re getting into. The pretense of being a serious crime drama of the early installments is gone. You are just going to get a wild ride.
…and sometimes that is okay.
I’m the first to criticize the films in this series. I think the second film might actually be the worst movie ever committed to celluloid. Or videotape. Or streaming. You know what I mean. I think the characters are hard to follow…are they alive or dead? That’s flexible. Never since Star Trek did a cast feel so much like a diversity checklist. I feel like marketing came in and said, “Okay, we need an African American….but can we make them Muslim? That gets us two checkmarks…”
That’s not to say the characters aren’t fun. I actually find Tyrese Gibson’s character fun….but notice I don’t know the character’s name? Or Ludacris? Or Vin Diesel...who I know is Dom, but I find that character so tedious, that I’ve been cheering for the Rock to come and knock him off since the fifth installment. Oh, please, please, please, let that happen.
But these movies are not about character development. They are about MacGuffins. For the uninitiated, a MacGuffin is a plot device…an object in a movie script (which I heard this movie actually had) that all the characters in the film want. In the 60s these were generally briefcases with files. Pulp Fiction actually brought that back. In the 70s, microfilm was a favorite. Nowadays, you see disks and USB drives fairly often. Even Star Wars had a MacGuffin or did you forget that movie was all about recovering the plans to the Death Star?
In this movie, our MacGuffin is some sort of weird globe that was cut in two. It needs to be recovered because if the two halves are reunited with an activating key, you can … well, you can rule the world. Basic Bond villain stuff here. What I get a kick out of is people ripped into James Bond in the late 90s for this kind of nonsense and pointed to the grittiness of movies like Fast and the Furious as the new feel for action films. Now, the two franchises have nearly switched seats (some would say for the detriment of both.)
While Bond typically did its stunts practically, the outlandish visual nonsense you are subjected to in these flicks appear to be primarily cartoons. The attachment to physics, particularly this installment’s questionable approach to magnetism, is tenuous at best. But you just have to keep repeating to yourself, “I’m the idiot that bought the ticket. And I’ve done it eight times before. So I’m supporting this crap. It’s my fault.”
I actually laughed out loud at the movie’s insane stunts (if you can call output from a PS4 game, which these sometimes resembled, a stunt) more than a couple comedies I’ve seen recently. I should mention, by the way, that the CGI, while it annoys me, is excellent in the film. It looks as realistic as you can expect at the state of the art and these visual artists should really be commended for making the completely unrealistic situations in the film appear feasible.
If I ever fall off the top of a building, I’m going to look for a car to fall onto; apparently, they are made of mats and foam because they broke some pretty insane falls in this flick.
John Cena should be commended with playing the part of…well, let’s get real. Vin Diesel and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson can’t be in the same room anymore, so they needed a replacement and Cena is freakishly gigantic, too. But he did well with his “heel turn” here playing the heavy. (Yet another trope of action films this movie is slave to. The rich “true villain” hires muscle, or the “heavy,” to perform the heavy lifting.) Charlize Theron is back, too, from whichever installment she was in. She is oddly taking this all very seriously. I’m not sure if she doesn’t know these movies are a joke or she’s intent on playing straight in hopes it comes off all the more jarring by doing so.
References to family, of course, dot the script but not to the nauseating extent some previous installments. F9 really feels like a movie put together by a creative team that has looked at the franchise and have specifically picked the things that have worked and punctuating those notes while shaving off a lot of the junk that didn’t work. For those that love the “saga” aspects of our characters’ continuing tales, that stuff is here, though I tend to watch these all as standalone films since the ongoing story is just as ridiculous as everything else. I know there was one reveal, in particular, that was total fan service and I thought “This is just proof I’m not a Millenial. I don’t care at all about this character. Can we move on?”
So did I like it? I hate myself for it, but yeah, it was fun. The action is well filmed and there is a ton of it. You can have a lot of fun with these films if you let yourself. So let go of logic and intelligence, sit back with your popcorn, and watch cars act like you used to zoom around your toy cars as a child. Remember, I’m the idiot that bought the ticket. And I’ve done it eight times before. So I’m supporting this crap. It’s my fault.