FAST X

To my count, and I may have missed a couple, the word “family” is said 26 times throughout Fast X.

That’s a “family” once every 5 and a half minutes.

That’s more often than “May the Force be with you” is used in the entire Star Wars film franchise!

More often than James Bond utters his catchphrase “Bond, James Bond” in 25 film!

And that’s not even taking into account the scenes where characters talk about family without explicitly saying the word! There are loads of those!

Anyway… I’ve put off talking about the film for long enough.

Which is a shame because, honestly, it's rubbish.

Which in turn is a shame, as it now appears that this is the first in a trilogy that will bring the Fast and Furious franchise to a close.

For the amount of disbelief it asks its audience to suspend, it needs to at least be entertaining. But other than one fairly lengthy Rome sequence, it just isn’t.

So what you’re left with is a film whose inadequacies are laid bare, because we have become desensitised to the action. It’s no longer engaging or innovative enough to distract us from its many, obvious flaws.

This is a film in which each character should die ten times over. But doesn’t, meaning there’s little genuine threat.

A film where the dialogue is so basic and uninteresting that it becomes difficult to pay attention to.

And a film where lines between good and bad have become so blurred it becomes difficult to genuinely hope that the heros succeed.

This is genuinely a film in which the supposed good characters celebrate the indoctrination of an 8 year old boy into the murderous cult of Toretto - high-fiving, cheering, and laughing as he accrues a body count Jason Bourne would be proud of.

And we’re supposed to root for these maniacs.

Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes is a villain that is fun to watch for about half an hour, but who becomes increasingly insufferable as the film goes on.

He is presented as an all-knowing puppeteer, pulling strings this way and that to position each of his subjects on this high octane chess board.

Yet his plan is so ludicrous, relying on coincidence after coincidence, on things that he could not possibly control, that it would take a demented deity to actually pull off.

He skips and dances around the set, like a knock off version of Heath Ledgers Joker, but rarely approaches anything like genuinely threatening. Instead, the idea that we might have to put up with his asinine antics for a further two films, made me feel genuinely bereft. A reaction greater than anything he did on screen managed to elicit.

Away from Momoa, The Fast & Furious’s revolving door of characters is working overtime, introducing new characters, and bringing back some old favourites, without actually giving any of them anything of importance to do.

In this film, outside of the main cast, we have Scott Eastwood, Daniela Melchior, Alan Ritchson, Helen Mirren, Brie Larson, Rita Moreno, Charlize Theron; Joaquim de Almeida; Luis Da Silva, Ludmilla and Pete Davidson.

And that’s not even a comprehensive list.

Some of them we’ve seen before - I can’t remember which. Some of them we’ll see again - I don’t care which. Some of them play a role in the plot. Some of them, presumably, were just contracted to appear in one more.

And with all of this going on on screen - problem, after problem, after problem - the biggest sin that Fast X commits, is that for the most part, it’s just boring.

All of the explosions, fist fights, and car chases in the world mean nothing, if you don’t have a cast of characters that you care about.

Fast X is the epitome of bigger rarely being better. A bigger cast of characters, facing bigger explosions, and doing bigger stunts. But I couldn’t have cared less about any of them. So what does any of it matter.

I have been a fan of this series in the past, but it seems to have gorged upon itself to such a degree that all we’re left with is the carcass of something that used to be fun, The bones still exist - for all they seem intent on pounding them into the ground - but none of the heart (and I think at one time it did have genuine heart) or the humour remain.

At least F9 had the decency to go to space.

Fast X does manage to invert a couple of series tropes towards the end, but by that point that damage had been done.

It is a dull, nonsensical mess, whose persistence with the family line is becoming embarrassing. Vin Diesel may want to forge forward in that direction, but on the basis of Fast X the family they are beginning to resemble most is the Manson’s, rather than the Walton’s.