By now, you’re either on board for the absolute bonkers insanity of this franchise, or you’re not. As a member of the viewing #family, I’ve loved these movies for years and stuck with them through plenty of highs and lows, but even I was pretty worried heading into this one. Director Justin Lin left the movie shortly into production, and Louis Leterrier was given the unenviable task of wrangling a gigantic blockbuster with exceptionally short notice. Not exactly ideal circumstances. Thankfully, he managed to deliver a film that not only has the requisite action beats — That bomb rolling through Rome! Dom driving down the face of a dam! — but also delivers the best villain of the franchise in the form of Jason Momoa’s Dante, one of the most unhinged and anarchic villains of any American action film this century.
Momoa’s extravagant, over the top performance (my man is really dialing it up here) gives the movie something the “Fast” saga has struggled to find in the wake of Paul Walker’s tragic death: a sense of fun. Walker’s surfer bro hero was the audience surrogate into the world of Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto and his family of street racers, but since Walker’s death, Diesel’s ultra-serious character has set the default tone for these movies. Not here. Dante licks the blood off a knife, and paints the toenails of a man he’s murdered. He’s so heightened that he dominates the movie. He’s deranged. It rules.
Yes, these movies are ridiculous. But that excess is part of the point, and “Fast X” provided so many moments of big time blockbuster action that you have, quite simply, gotta hand it to them. (Ben Pearson)