“F9” Film Review

By Quinn Marcus

There have been nine of these movies now…nine! Let that sink in for a moment, these films literally devour money like it’s nothing, and we’ll keep watching them forever and ever. Why do I keep seeing them? Why? I guess it’s because every once in a while, I like to take a break from existential crisis-inducing masterpieces that give me depression for a couple of weeks and see fast cars ram into each other. To be very clear, I haven’t seen the first four films, only the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th installments, as well as Hobbs and Shaw. I’ve found a weird amount of enjoyment in most of the ones I’ve seen, all of which I don’t consider bad, or great, this franchise has consistently remained…okay. The most recent film, The Fate of the Furious was a clear step down from the Furious 7, my favorite film in the franchise thus far, it was big, loud, and reasonably well-cast, but came across as just another generic blockbuster with not too much on its mind.

F9 tells the story of Dom, and his “family” who once again need to stop a super evil evildoer from taking over the world’s weapon systems or something, look, Cardi B shows up at one point in the film, I had no idea what was going on. Fancy cars, explosions, partying, and other stuff, that’s about all you need to know.

This one surprised me on a negative level, with the director, Justin Lin, who helmed two of the best films (5,6), as well as two earlier installments, returning to make, um, whatever this was. F9, okay, first of all, what is it with the title inconsistency with these movies, can’t each one just be titled Fast and Furious insert number here. We’ve had Fast 5, The Fast and the Furious, Fast and Furious, like, stick to one fucking template, please! I guess the reason may be related to the fact that all of these films are pretty much the same movie, to summarize…ahem: family is cool, cars go vroom and boom, bad guy and good guy want McGuffin, I mean dope piece of tech that controls some shit, and, did I mention cars go very fast? Also, they all drink beer and party at the end, but we don’t need to talk about that. The point is, maybe they just wanted to spice things up with all these annoying title changes, and somehow, it worked! Every movie absorbs cash, and they’ll be made again and again, and when the main actors get too old, they’ll make more spinoffs, or recast it, I don’t know.

Anyway, we’re getting off-topic a little bit, let’s return to the subject of today, the film that honors everything cinema was meant to be, the greatest blockbuster of all time, F9, yay! For starters, the screenplay is one of the bestest pieces of writing my ears have ever had the pleasure of going numb while listening to. It’s truly remarkable how much missing information the screenplay has, and how noticeable it is, with these broad strokes of brilliance, the filmmaker develops a sense of mystery. Examine the moment when Dom and Letty are called to go on another life-threatening mission, and they have to say goodbye to their child, they tuck him in and simply leave for a couple of months. These parents may die, and they don’t even think to call a sitter, masterful writing, someone clearly understands parenting. Anyway, another incredible thing this film attempts (and fails miserably at) is trying to be self-aware. At least one million bullets are fired at our merry band of heroes, they take punches, ride flying cars, crash cars, get pulled through buildings by magnetic cars, and yet they emerged unscathed.

Tyrese Gibson addresses this with extreme subtlety, observe: “What if we’re invincible?” Roman literally has bullet holes in his shirt, and yet, this is played as a joke for the entire movie, with almost no payoff whatsoever, brilliant if you ask me. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know they go up to space with candy, and minion outfits, but as Roman and Tej are flying, Tej says: “If we just obey the laws of physics, we’ll be fine.” I’d pay good money to watch a physics teacher analyze this movie, and potentially consider murdering hims-, I mean complimenting the film’s perfectly logical scenes. Seriously though, this is the most insane film in the franchise yet, at this point, just call it science fiction, the things they do in this film are close to magic, and I think they’ve officially lost me on this one.

Okay, back to being ultra critic, did I have any positives? Well, the cast is fine as always, and I found the first 20mins or so to be relatively fun, also the soundtrack was kinda cool, I guess. That’s about it, this film is horrendously made, the action scenes are exhausting, the villains have no other purpose in the film but to say evil stuff, and the dialogue is so cringeworthy. There was a scene where they referenced Star Wars for a few minutes, and my uncle turned to me and sighed so hard that it was hilarious. The flashbacks of Dom’s life as a teen with his brother were fascinating at first but became too ridiculous at some point to be taken seriously. The cinematography is bland and uninteresting, reminding me of bad action commercials that could have been made with iMovie. Justin Lin’s directing is fast-paced for a little bit, but at 2hrs and 20mins, I couldn’t help but find most of it boring, I wish I could get that time back. The previous films were fun, slick, thoroughly engaging heist flicks that weren’t perfect, but understood what it takes to be an entertaining film. They didn’t try to take themselves seriously, instead, they let you accept what was going on, pure madness, but not the over-the-top BS this film had in store. I am worried for the future of this franchise, especially with Lin returning to make the 10th film, they better “finish” (if they ever do) strong, or else I don’t know if I’ll make it through the next one. Unless the fastest family on Earth decides to time travel, cause let’s face it, that would be the coolest thing to ever come out of the movie industry.