More Cars Please! Fast X

My guilty pleasure — (The) Fast & Furious movies, specifically Fast & Furious 10, aka Fast X. Only like The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, X turns out to be Part 1. Noooooooooooo…

After F9 with its focus on family, faith, women in more and bigger clothing, fewer gratuitous bottom shots and more sending cars into space, this feels like going back a gear or five. A sad U-turn or reverse around the corner.

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Whilst Michelle Rodriguez makes a fantastic leading lady, more than holding her own against weary looking family man Vin Diesel and Charlize Theron makes a crackling villain, clearly relishing opportunities to act rather than just looking pretty, there are uncomfortable shifts to women twerking as they wait for an illegal street race to happen. It’s all a bit Transformers. But what’s your issue — this is Fast and Furious, after all? Yet in F9 #MeToo seemed to have been listened to and even the token scantily clad dancing women had actual clothing allowances. It’s mostly gone out the passenger window here — yet at the same time suggested as token empowerment by having a strong female driver (sister of a good dead cop, Jordana Brewster) and Nathalie Emmanuel showing that women can be techie, smart and beautiful — all at the same time. (A joke is even made about this!) Not to mention celebrating the older power woman in Helen Mirren and Rita Moreno (dripping with bling!) Two national treasurers in one movie! Interestingly there is much more of a clothing allowance by the time the race starts — everyone stops twerking for the close ups and generally covers up.

There is a plot — it’s not important. Essentially evil Aquaman (a deranged and cringeworthily camp Jason Momoa) and his corrupt evil cop/Agency sidekick are out to revenge themselves by destroying culturally important artefacts, such as Rome and the Vatican City, and indeed the world. No idea why — something to do with his dad, who was also very bad. Or perhaps he hated his history teacher or had one too many bad trips to an art gallery? There are flashbacks to fill this in where evil Aquaman is less deranged… Dominic Toretto and his family (all of them) get in the way by seeking to pursue and corral a bouncing, rolling BOMB around Rome. (And stop him KABOOMING the Pope). It’s still all about Faith and Family….Phew… Torrto’s completely battered car at this point can be compared and contrasted with the shot up DB5 in No Time To Die….

Understandably evil Aquaman is completely narked at failing to KABOOM world sites of historic interest and major religious leaders, so steals something off of arch villain Charlize Theron, leading her deposition to # no 2 world evil person and heads off for a spa day with his dead henchmen before resuming trying to take over the world. She has a gadget to disable weapons preventing her imminent demise — only this would make for a shorter film, so she abandons using the gadget to fight her way out to the lift!!! and revenge herself on her turncoat henchmen who have ‘chosen’ to follow evil Aquaman to save their kids lives! *Spoiler alert — this tactic doesn’t do them any favours later on.*

Continuing the theme of fathers and sons, in protecting his son from evil dudes with guns, Toretto enlists an auntie and then an uncle to help. Which brings some light relief in the form of mix tapes and an uncool car! Is this really Fast and Furious any more?!!! Meanwhile evil Aquaman steals all the Toretto family money to pay mercenaries and evil dudes to kill them off — spaceman Roman (Tyrese Gibson) thankfully has all his money literally about his person in cash. So they go to a dodgy coffee shop in London to buy weapons. Whilst this results in some views of London you don’t normally see, they fail spectacularly to be smooth, discreet or successful in their mission — and have to revisit Shaw (Jason Statham) to get the job done properly. A classic moment is watching Statham carefully bag every weapon hung up on his wall and get ready to go and fight some bad guys! Packing for a journey as never seen before!

The cast is huge — almost flabby with people and returns from older movies, the cars (both fast and furious) are too few, the stunts are as even more ridiculous than ever (hooray!) such as stopping a bomb with cars, the Italian police are failures according to this movie (shooting at a bomb!!!) and all I could think was that Toretto Jr is going to have awful PTSD by the end. He’s been shot at, experienced the break-up of his family, seen his parents with guns, had his home invaded and destroyed, seen his aunt attacked by same gun shooting home invaders, seen his uncle sacrifice himself to stop the bad dude, been kidnapped and then parachuted off a bridge in a car and nearly drowned. (This is only Part 1). Somewhere in there is a deeper movie about what it means to be a good father — evil Aquaman is trying to best his dad’s reputation as evil overlord, whilst Torreto is aiming for a better, more peaceful life for his son and to be good husband and father. Another deeper theme, echoing on from F9, is what does it mean to have faith, especially when times are tough — to keep faith, to believe, to hope not in a wishing way — but confidently that there is justice and a justice bringer, that evil cannot overcome ultimate good and will be brought to account, that evil will not last or have the final say. In this movie this is suggested through the passing on of a cross, but also in the statue of Jesus with arms flung wide. The Torreto family don’t just hope in a wishing well kind of way for good to come, but seek to actively and enthusiastically bring it. But can they — are they, strong enough when evil Aquaman seems unstoppable and invincible, unconquerable?

Whilst there is humour and stunts, there just aren’t enough cars. (Though there is a bomb rolling through Rome and the chase resulting in an escape off of a bridge using a crane!) Saving Mia from injury and imminent death in a race and the blingy gold number help, as does the comedy uncle Jakob (John Cena) and poor old Sung Kang as Han, the sage butt of everyone’s jokes. Intriguingly the family have abandoned praying before food in favour of motivational phrases; however my bet is on Gal Gadot’s Gisele Yashar saving the world in a submarine. After all, sisters are doing it for themselves! (Michelle Rodriguez’s escape into a snow clad scene is another classic scene). Unless it is ofcourse Dwayne Johnson…Does give Bond, Bourne, Mission Impossible a severe run for their money in terms of action sequences and locations — but the overall lack of cars and the poorly written cartoon of a villain bring this down a notch, not to mention the inflated cast. Having said all this, it may not be the submarine of Gal Gadot, but Brie Larson who lives to fight another day and brings the Agency back on side again…with more cars…

• Disclaimer — I did enjoy this movie — there are cars and driving, both fast and furiously, there are superb stunts, Rome is saved, it is fun! There is diversity, age positivity and many loving friendships and working relationships between men and women, there is sacrifice, Gal Gadot piloting a submarine!!! But it lets itself down by being too flabby with people and plots and sub-plots and Momoa’s character is an appallingly written villain. It’s sad to see such a franchise with such sloppy writing at its last huzzah. Not quite going out in a blaze of glory — but maybe the women and Jason Statham, not to mention the Rock, will make it right in Part 2, and the son will get over his fear of driving to conquer all the trauma he’s suffered in Part 1 as well as bringing about world peace!

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