ONE week before Fast X started filming, action superstar and model of sleeveless shirts Vin Diesel posted a video on Instagram of then-director Justin Lin and himself.
In the video, Lin is visibly uncomfortable, and seemed completely zoned out. One might even theorise that someone was aiming a gun at Lin out of frame, so that he would cooperate with Diesel, who just prattled on while Lin gave an awkward smile every few seconds.
A week later, Lin exited Fast X as a director, and Louis Leterrier was brought on-board, given a day to get his bearings, and began shooting the next day.
The reason that video – which is still on Diesel’s Instagram page – and Leterrier’s quick hiring is brought up is important, as it highlights how a core director of the franchise was driven off by alleged “major disagreements”, while a more subservient director was brought in as substitute to placate the whims of the franchise lead.
And that is how we have Fast X, a nearly two-and-a-half-hour-long film that looks and talks like it was directed by an A.I.
Cinema is dead
Retconning the events of Fast Five in the opening minutes of the film, Fast X introduces Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) as the son of the drug lord in the 2011 film, and injects him directly into the climax of that film.
Dante is also the very first instance where the film feels like it was written by a fan, and not by someone that wrote the previous films.
Imagine watching Fast Five with a seven-year-old, and then he jumps up and shouts: “What if that bad guy had a son, and that son was evil, like so much more evil?!”
In Fast X, Dante kicks his preposterous, decade-long revenge into motion by targeting Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his family because they took Dante’s only family from him.
While all of that is going on, there is also a spy fiction subplot involving “The Agency”. Along the way, other characters from previous films in the franchise regularly drop in and out of Fast X.
On that note, Fast X fails to take the kind of lunatic choices the other films in the franchise have taken when it comes to pushing the laws of gravity and common sense in its action sequences.
The “craziest” action sequence is possibly the first one in Rome, where the Toretto family are forced to stop an elephant-sized bomb using their cars, as it rolls toward the Vatican. But, this is derivative of Fast Five’s vault action sequence (which Fast X literally opens with).
A possible explanation could simply be the lack of Lin. Ever since the early films’ street races, the action in the Fast & Furious have always been like watching a five-year-old play with his toy cars, and that’s just it; the action and the imagination that inspired it, no matter how idiotic, always felt like it came from a human source.
That does not exist in Fast X. The action in this film has no imagination, no soul, no thought. Sequences are constructed like binary code. Algorithms seemingly deciphered and arranged by an AI to produce:
“Dominic Toretto, turns his head left and sees a semi-trailer approaching. He turns right, another semi-trailer. He mutters something macho before deciding the only way is forward. Dominic Toretto hits the gas. He drives off a dam. The semi-trailers crash into each other. Explosion. Fire streams down the dam, enveloping Dominic Toretto’s car. Slow-motion. Dominic presses the nitro button. The car’s exhaust explodes, sending the car zooming further down the dam. Panoramic shot.”
Frankly, after F9 sent the film to space, Fast X missed the opportunity for more space nonsense.
Scene stealer
So, the story is – as usual –nonsensical, the action is boring, and everything lacks personality, like its lead.
Is it all a loss with Fast X? Not quite. Jason Momoa is probably the best thing to happen to this film. One thing the Fast & Furious franchise has always lacked consistently is a solid villain. No, not a solidly written villain. This is Fast & Furious, after all. A solidly entertaining villain.
Sure, there has been Idris Elba playing a superhuman terrorist in Hobbs & Shaw, and Charlize Theron’s femme fatale cyberterrorist Cipher, but both played it straight and somewhat a little serious.
But Momoa, wearing silk clothes, his hair tied in space buns (the two bun-style girls usually have), talking to two dead guys with their eyes cellophane taped open takes the cake.
The scenery-chewing, unhinged, flamboyant lunacy Momoa brings is something that this self-serious franchise has always lacked in all its gratuitous display of hyper-masculinity with zero self-awareness.
As Fast X ends with an obvious cliffhanger – and Vin Diesel’s gross resurrection of another previously dead character – Momoa will return in the next film.
Finally, audiences sick of Toretto’s clay-face have someone to root for.
