F9 Movie Review: The Most Comprehensive Fast & Furious Still Feels Incomplete

A poorly-used John Cena can’t mask Justin Lin’s gimmicks and meta discussions. 1b1k4l

By Akhil Arora | Updated: 2 September 2021 08:00 IST

Fast & Furious 9 Review: F9 Is the Most Comprehensive Fast & Furious, Yet Still Feels Incomplete

Photo Credit: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures sh1a

Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto, John Cena as Jakob Toretto in Fast & Furious 9

Highlights

Fast & Furious 9 released September 2 in India
Available in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu
Vin Diesel and John Cena lead F9 movie cast

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Thirty-five minutes in, Fast & Furious 9 — finally released in Indian cinemas — has its most interesting idea. Tyrese Gibson's comic-relief Roman Pearce suggests that the Fast crew might be invincible. That's F9 acknowledging the team's superhero status that became clear to the audience a few movies ago. This meta discussion almost feels like co-writers Daniel Casey and Justin Lin (who is also the director) are commenting on the criticisms levied against the Fast & Furious series. It also imparts a degree of self-awareness to F9, allowing the new chapter to get in on the big joke that its characters seem to survive anything and everything. Charlize Theron gets in on the act later too, tying a fellow villain's predicament to film structure. F9 knows it's a Fast & Furious movie — and that they do not make sense.

This is also the same underlying principle for many of its stunts, including Lin's new toy: electromagnets. Actually, let me rephrase that, GIANT electromagnets. The 49-year-old Taiwan native and the trailers were real, they are actually in space. Again, it makes no sense — but it's not even supposed to anymore.

Fast & Furious 9 is also — by my ittedly poor recollection of the previous eight mainline films — the first entry in The Fast Saga to have extensive flashback scenes. There's Gal Gadot's Gisele appears through archival footage. And oh, Han Lue (Sung Kang) is back — in case you missed that whole reveal in the news last year. What I mean to say is that Fast & Furious 9 brings back virtually everyone we know, put together in one film — F9 is essentially a compendium of The Fast Saga. But it's still incomplete.

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“It's not about being the stronger man Dom. It's about being the bigger one,” Jack Toretto says to his elder son early in Fast & Furious 9. The line is meant to foreshadow the confrontation between the (older) Toretto brothers, Dom (Vin Diesel) and Jakob (John Cena) that forms the film's emotional bedrock — but funnily enough, it also works as a lesson for Diesel and Co., who refuse to look weak on-screen and throw a fight, going so far to put it in their contracts. In F9, a tragedy divides the family and the brothers go their own way, until a fateful meeting two decades later in Central America, where Jakob shows up and steals a MacGuffin from under the Fast crew, who were lured there to help Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell).

That kicks off a crazy globetrotting plot, stretching from Tokyo, London, Edinburgh, Cologne, Tbilisi, Caspian Sea, to space. Wait, is it still globetrotting if you leave the globe? That decision splits Fast & Furious 9 into parallel narratives, as the team pursues separate missions to stop Jakob's plan. Dom's wife Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) and sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) set off for Tokyo where they discover Han (Kang) is back from the dead, Roman (Gibson) and his buddy Tej Parker (Ludacris) are sent off to Cologne that leads to some Tokyo Drift reunions (for the audience), and Dom roams around Britain on his own for a bit — accompanied by delightful cameos from the returning Helen Mirren and new entrant rapper Cardi B — until the rest of the crew s him anyway.

Dividing the Fast & Furious ensemble allows F9 to have them play off each other in a more rewarding limited-setting fashion. The Tokyo scenes give us nice character moments between Letty and Mia — they also provide a brief peek at what that Disney would never approve of.

Fast & Furious 9 Box Office Crosses $700 Million Ahead of India Release

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz, Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto in Fast & Furious 9
Photo Credit: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Unfortunately, the wonderful Theron is largely wasted once more. It's made all the more awkward because F9 seems to take a shot at how how James Gunn makes better use of Cena, where his character is also self-serious but the movie knows he's a bit of a joke.

It's unfortunate — Cena just isn't good at contorting his face muscles the way other male stars in Diesel, Dwayne Johnson (who's missing here due to 2023 and 2024, respectively. Speaking of, having brought back everyone, Lin has been talking about bringing back Brian O'Conner (Walker) too, with help from CGI and his brothers. Now that's going too far.

Fast & Furious 9 is released Thursday, September 2 in India in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu.

It's a John Cena double-header this week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, as we discuss The Suicide Squad, and later, Fast & Furious 9 (from 28:03). Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Read Review

Release Date 2 September 2021
Language English
Genre Action
Cast
Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron
Director
Justin Lin
Producer
Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel, Jeff Kirschenbaum, Joe Roth, Justin Lin, Clayton Townsend, Samantha Vincent

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