5/20/23 - Fast X (2023) - 3+/4-/10

11 movies into an ever wilder, ever wackier car criminals franchise that just finished recently fighting cyborgs and flying cars into space, it seems weak sauce to dryly cough out “jumped the shark!”. I mean, at this point, you are locked in your ‘family’ vehicle and they keep building that shark ramp higher and higher… But it DID “jump the shark” this time. Like a joke that was unfunny, turned funny, but has persisted long enough to dip back down into unfunny; Fast appears to have lost its luster for crafting the crazy into delirious and digestible mayhem. This Fast was dumb-to-dumber than the previous, but unlike them, did not have the glue of jokes, action, and character that keeps you pleasantly pacified in between the carsanity and the doom-spinning. 

Trotting out the poor pup of “this is unbelievable/doesn’t make sense” is a dog that just won’t hunt at this point in the films. You expect that, but this one was so unrepentant in its incessant nonsense, and executed so many of these beyond-belief set-pieces & character interactions without pulling the audience along. You have to have some dialogue beyond “family”, some stakes-filled drama, and some reasonable plot massaging if you are going to have 100 lbs non-active mom effortlessly kick the ass of a cadre of elite SWAT soldiers, all while never mentioning the IRL deceased Paul Walker’s alive character & child or why he isn’t there. She can kick ass and has before, but this is less about her and more about the effectiveness of the antagonists and their usage, and how that is endemic of the totality. When everything around them, be it the laws of gravity, the permanence of death, the linear progression of time/events or the immutable drive for family, becomes negotiable or outright ignorable, ‘going fast’ and ‘getting somewhere’ become mutually exclusive nitrous injectors for your film.

Perhaps I have just blown a tire or hit a wall in my F&F love-mobile, but it was the smooshing more and more thin as paper characters into this clown car of nonsense, while letting the least charismatic, enjoyable, and worthy entries in the menagerie take center stage in grinding the whole should-be-enjoyable mess to a halt. The sole redeeming addition, and the bright bloody star of the whole show, is the quizzically unstable and intentionally odd Jason Mamoa sociopathic mastermind big baddie of the flick. He cultivates a Joker-esque chaotic element, while he dances through scenes of homicide and havoc with his painted nails and exquisitely eccentric demeanor and regalia. He is a wildly flaming torch of interest in an otherwise drab speedway of dumb bits and excessive set-pieces.

When I reflect on the film and drill down, I don’t see that much vastly different than its predecessors. It’s just that I didn’t enjoy the ride here. All frenetic fizz but no pathos pop.