Despite its title, it's arguably the eleventh entry in the franchise but for purposes here, it's the tenth film that began with The Fast and the Furious (2001). It follows a criminal turned international spy who commits heists for himself or on behalf of the government in order to stop more evil or more dastardly villains. It also follows the crew of people he's gathered who have become his makeshift family. What started as a street racing drama has morphed into over-the-top, high-speed adventures with automobiles. It's also become akin to super-hero flicks.
Vin Diesel occasionally moonlights as the voice of the super-hero named Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy and the subsequent MCU films but the majority of his time over the past 20 years has been dedicated to playing Dominic Toretto, aka "Dom," an ethnically ambiguous mechanic who used to pull off heists for financial gain, stealing cash and hijacking cars. The government frequently recruits him and his crew as mercenaries to take down bigger bad guys. He's basically a large beefcake of little words who is the best race-car driver that has ever lived.
There are characters and references from the four previous entries, but this film more directly ties itself to Fast Five (2011). The plot of this builds off the events of that 2011 blockbuster. There's some revisionist history involved, but it essentially picks up where that fifth installment left off. Not too many franchises have the ability to reach back this far in order to pluck an antagonist from the past and drop him into the present. The only other parallel that comes to mind is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). In that science-fiction sequel, Captain Kirk and his crew are in danger from a villain in his past whom Kirk left for dead who now wants revenge.
Here, Jason Momoa (Dune and Aquaman) co-stars as Dante Reyes, the son of Hernan Reyes, a Brazilian drug lord. In Fast Five, Dom and his team helped to take down Hernan's criminal empire, ending with Hernan's death. The revisionist history involves inserting Dante in the famous bridge chase that resulted in his daddy's demise and implying that Dante was also left for dead in that bridge chase. Now, Dante wants revenge against Dom and his team. He's the Khan to Dom's Captain Kirk. Only, Momoa is way more over the top. He's possibly ripping off Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight (2008), but perhaps leaning more into Mark Hamill's Joker from every animated Batman film that Hamill ever did.
Dante is meant to be this cartoonish and highly animated villain in order to match the cartoon-like nature that these films have adopted. Momoa's scenery chewing is supposed to provide stakes and convince us that the protagonists here might be in some actual danger. Otherwise, there might not be much to give any real thrills here. The cartoon nature of this franchise over the past decade has made it harder to sell any tangible sense of danger.
It also doesn't help that this franchise has rendered the idea of death meaningless. So many characters have come back from the dead in these films that this franchise shares more in common with the soap opera Days of Our Lives (1965) than something like the James Bond film series. Director Louis Letterier (The Incredible Hulk and Transporter 2) probably would prefer to draw comparisons from James Bond rather than Marlena Evans. Lettterier probably even told Momoa to brush up on his Bond villains, but Momoa swerved toward Batman villains instead like Riddler and Two-Face.
What's silly is that this film opens by depicting Momoa's Dante dying and then being resurrected. This is a refrain that has been consistent throughout these films. Michelle Rodriguez returns as Letty, the wife of Dom. Letty essentially died in the fourth film. She was resurrected for the sixth. Sung Kang returns as Han Lue, a member of Dom's makeshift family. Han died in the third film but was resurrected in the ninth. Without spoiling anything, a character killed in the sixth film is resurrected by the end of this one. The irony isn't lost that there are multiple shots in this film of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro with Dante himself posing the same way as that statue.
It gets to a point that like Days of Our Lives, death no longer matters in these narratives. When the actor Paul Walker died, the franchise had an opportunity to make death matter. Walked played Brian O'Connor, the former co-lead of this franchise. Brian could have been killed off, but the filmmakers decided not to do so. Therefore, these films enshrined this idea that death would never matter. A character seemingly dies in this entry, but it doesn't matter because this franchise has trained us to believe that the character can simply be resurrected in an upcoming entry.
One can be entertained and perhaps dazzled at the action, involving various ways to race and ultimately crash cars. There isn't much here that is new or all that innovative. Purposefully, a lot of the action is meant to be callbacks to set-pieces from Fast Five, homages or perhaps rip-offs. The only engaging fight scenes are the ones involving Charlize Theron who returns as Cipher, the villain in the eighth film. There is some comedy that works in short bursts. John Cena who plays Jakob Toretto, the brother to Dom, gets some funny moments. Tyrese Gibson who plays Roman Pearce and Chris Bridges who plays Tej Parker have their typical comedy duo shtick, but even that isn't as hitting as it perhaps once was. I'm not sure anything now can top their antics in outer space, which occurred in the ninth film.
Notably, Alan Ritchson (Reacher and Blue Mountain State) plays Agent Aimes, a member of the government agency that used to employ Dom but now is hunting Dom after he was framed for a terrorist attack. Ritchson's very first Hollywood role was in the series Smallville (2001) in which he played the character of Aquaman. It's funny that two buff actors who both played Aquaman in their careers are now working together in this film, Ritchson and Momoa. Finally, in one scene, Dom is called "no Gregory Peck," but in reality Vin Diesel is exactly Gregory "Pecs," meaning he like most of the men in this film are nothing but thick upper bodies that are constantly grunting behind a steering wheel.
Rated PG-13 for action, violence, language and suggestive material.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 21 mins.
In theaters.
