After over 20 years and a substantial genre shift from humble street racing movies to massive, globe-trotting action blockbusters, the Fast and Furious franchise is starting to wind down. Given all of the behind-the-scenes drama, the majority of the core cast being in their mid-to-late 40's or early 50's and the void caused by the tragic death of Paul Walker that the series still hasn't quite been able to overcome, the time for Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his increasingly large family to retire from driving, espionage and live-action Looney Tunes stunts has never felt more appropriate. The beginning of the endgame materializes in Fast X and the end of the road is looking like it's going to be filled with the biggest obstacles the Toretto crew has ever faced.
The playbook of Fast and Furious is so well-established at this point that every follower of the series know what they're getting into when they sit down to watch a new installment. The crew gets dragged into a mission where they have to stop psychopath from blowing up an entire continent, crippling the world's banking systems or some combination of the two, a small group of new cast members join the fold and everything gets resolved at the end of the movie without any real collateral damage. While calling Fast X subversive would be a bit of a reckless overstatement, the film does have a sense of real danger running through it that was previously foreign to the franchise.
Causing this harrowing, legit threat to Toretto and co. is a man named Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa). Not only is Reyes highly motivated to inflict revenge on Toretto after he was responsible for killing his father Hernan (Joquaim de Almeida-who appears both via archival footage and a couple of new scenes they shot for this movie) in Fast Five, but he operates like the impervious supervillain answer to the entire main crew as he's an expert in hacking, weaponry, driving and anything else that would possibly be useful in this universe. After framing them for a terrorist attack in Rome, Reyes is able to fragment the family by forcing them to go on the lam either alone (Diesel), in a small group (Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang) or as a duo (John Cena, Leo Abelo Perry) while also managing to get Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) arrested and hauled off to a black site jail. Having a presence that is powerful enough to separate the group and put them in real danger creates an Avengers: Infinity War-esque feeling of impending doom that gives the film a darker, high stakes vibe that makes Fast X a distinctly entertaining entry in the series.
The match that ignites this more danger-filled take on Fast and Furious is the unstoppable force that is Momoa in the role of Dante Reyes. While the general description of Dante as a character makes it seem like he's some kind of deeply imposing psychopath, Momoa finds a way to make him both a wildly entertaining and unpredictable villain. He plays Dante as this flamboyant, eccentric loose cannon who takes perverse glee in toying with and inflicting a tremendous amount of pain on his enemies. Every moment he's on screen is a highlight of the film and it's awesome to see Momoa effectively weaponize his signature charisma to play the ultimate colorful yet playfully sadistic bad guy. Reyes is the perfect antagonist for this proudly over-the-top franchise and it's a massive blessing that he gets the opportunity as serve as this final boss-type figure for Torretto and co.
Much like F9, there a few roadblocks that prevent Fast X from hitting the heights of the franchise's best entries. The setpieces, while still consistently solid, lack the gloriously cartoonish flare that has made the action of the other recent entries so great, the whole deciding to keep Walker's Brian O'Connor alive decision is becoming more and more of a burden on the storytelling (Brian and Jordana Brewster's Mia Toretto are conveniently not targeted by Dante-which even by the franchise's deeply unserious standards- makes zero sense considering what else occurs over the course of this film) and the big emotional moments in the final scenes don't carry any real weight because we all know that through the magic of the Fast and Furious retconning they can be reversed with ease at any moment. But when you consider the bigger, more urgent narrative stakes at play and the fact that Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, The Incredible Hulk) had to effectively re-work the movie on the fly after Justin Lin quit a week into shooting, it's impressive that Fast X didn't turn into a complete mess. With Leterrier set to return for the (hopefully) final installment without the added stress of rearranging the DNA of a movie on short notice and an intriguing stage being set in the final moments for the next film, I'm optimistic about the odds of the Fast and Furious franchise ending on a high note.
Grade: B+
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