The Fast and Furious franchise is definitely one that doesn’t need to be thought too hard about while watching…and Fast X definitely fits that bill.
Some of the events that occurred had been spoiled in the trailer. For instance, Cipher’s reappearance – but then again, she was always going to come back, being one of the few villains who was shown to still be alive at the end of the movie she appeared in.
There were some nice nods to the characters in the previous movies. For instance, it was good to see Elena’s younger sister…how she was affected by her older sister’s death and her interactions with Dom.
Dom is quite an intriguing character, since he started off as one of the bad guys in the first Fast and Furious…only to have an almost complete turnaround, from antihero to full hero. One of the other characters mentioned that he’s forever running back into the burning building to save others, heedless of the danger of the building collapsing onto him…and if that doesn’t describe Dom so completely, I don’t know what does.
So. Jason Momoa plays a psychopath so incredibly well in this movie. And he was even described as such by my nine-year-old nephew, Freddie, who saw the movie literally a day after I did. It is a little predictable to have yet another enemy crawl out of the woodwork to come after Dom and his family…but Dante is an unhinged enemy and the danger does feel pretty real; at least to innocent bystanders, given that the main family seem to be protected by plot armour, something that’s even mentioned by one of the characters in the ninth movie!
There was obviously going to be a confrontation between Han and Shaw in this movie. I didn’t realise that the extra scene in Hobbs and Shaw was actually from Fast X, but as the conflict wouldn’t have felt resolved if the interaction had happened offscreen, it was good to see them…even if Shaw’s immediate reaction of violence wasn’t perhaps the best decision. Still, it was good to see him make an appearance again; and given that he’s been shown to be a more nuanced character, I would have liked to see a bit more of him working with Dom’s team.
All told, I did enjoy this movie. It didn’t require too much thought, and it was nice to see more of the other characters, like Little Brian and Jakob. Unfortunately, the movie did end on a bit of a cliffhanger…and while it seemed very much like Dom and the rest of the family were in dire straits, it was a bit hard to assume that any of them had been fatally taken out, given the franchise’s penchant for bringing the dead back to life.