REVIEW #58 Fast and Furious 9 (F9) (2021)

F9 is the latest instalment of the Fast and Furious franchise and we see Dom and Letty now living off the grid with Dom’s son Brian. However a distress call from Mr Nobody soon calls the team back into action, where Dom discovers this is more to do with family then group realise. 

CAST & THE ACTING 

All of the cast return, with Vin Diesel reprising the role of Dominic Toretto, Michelle Rodriguez as Letty, Tyrese Gibson as Roman, Jordana Brewster as Mia, Ludacris as Tej, Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey and even Sung Kang returning as Han! John Cena joins the cast as Jacob Toretto and Charlize Theron also returns as Cipher. The acting is actually pretty good with a nice blend of comedy and emotion. After 9 films you would expect the cast dynamic to be great and it is, you can see the chemistry come across on screen. There wasn’t any extraordinary acting displayed but it was good enough to get you invested in the story, particularly the complicated relationship with Dom and Jacob. I was surprised by John Cena who took to the role really well. Lucas Black even returns as Sean but they absolutely ruined his character, who’s now left Tokyo to become a car rocket scientist, I couldn’t believe how badly they destroyed the original Sean we all loved in Tokyo Drift.

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

This is where I am really torn because the introduction of Jacob Toretto was a really great idea and touching on his and Dom’s past via flashbacks really helped flesh out the relationship and build a strong rivalry between two characters. However once again in typical Fast and Furious fashion that was completely overlooked because of the absolutely ridiculous sequences included in this film. Not only do they drive cars in space which is ridiculous, they mess around with ultra strong magnets and I have never seen so many stupid vehicle sequences in any film I’ve watched before. At one point Dom crashes a huge truck that’s sort of like a train, rolls it down a mountain, uses C4 to flip it back round the right way and then casually takes control and drives it straight into an advanced military plane. There are at least 6/7 other things just like this that actually made me want to stop watching the film it was that bad. So I think they completely ruined the film with this. 

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

They needed great special effects in this film because of all the stupid scenes they created. So yes the special effects are good and look as realistic as they can be but it didn’t make watching those silly scenes any easier. There was some nice cinematography used on occasions through the film but they definitely focused more on the CGI and effects compared to beautiful visuals. The biggest example of CGI would have to be the outer space scene, they literally strapped a rocket engine to a car and put Tyrese and Tej in outer space… 

OVERALL (5.5/10)

This hurts me to give such a low score because I have always been a big fan of the films but it has now got to the point where they have included so many utterly ridiculous scenes that I wanted to stop watching it in the first 20 minutes. It’s almost like the producers have heard fans taking the mick out of the franchise for getting more and more unrealistic and thought “okay let’s just take it to the extreme and give them something to laugh about”. That’s how bad it got, the audience was actually laughing at how stupid it was in the cinema! It’s a shame because the storyline of Dom’s brother Jacob and the flashbacks to their past was really good and had so much potential. 

Thanks for reading.

Callan