Fast x, Fast and furious,.Vin Diesel, Gal Gadot, Ludacris, Daniela Melchior, Scott Eastwood
Universal Studios doesn't have X-wings, but they do have flying cars occasionally. It doesn't have superheroes, but it does have Los Angeles street racers who steal VCRs and nuclear submarines. With so many directors striving earnestly and audaciously to keep fan-favorite characters and legacy franchises relevant in recent years, the Fast and Furious series' increasingly open embrace of nonsensical mayhem has been a treat. In 2021, F9 was able to present several successful crazy action scenes based on the magic of magnets. and sent Tyrese and Ludacris into space in a Pontiac. He told us that John Cena was Vin Diesel's brother with a serious face, and we believed it. Or at least those of us who were willing to forgo logic in order to enjoy that wild ride. But it turns out that there is a limit to how far this kind of absurdity can go without returning to reality. The raucous fun of the F9 opens the way for the dissonant Fast X, which is an extended, over-stuffed opening to an epilogue that splits into pieces putting a giant boulder in the series' highway. Almost the only thing that saves the movie is the eccentric and wildly entertaining villain played by Jason Momoa.
It was 2011 when in Fast Five we saw Hobbs chasing Brian and Dom as they dragged drug lord Hernan Reyes' safe around Rio. It was a turning point as cartoonish logic began to make its way into the once-serious series. And do you know? The movies that followed were better because of that. There's a vulnerability and risk in changing a series' direction so drastically halfway through, and no one would have imagined watching the original 2001 movie that the Fast films would ever take that risk, and on top of that manage to turn it into something explosive and unique.
As usual from the series, Fast X simply reveals that Hernan's son, Dante (Jason Momoa), was in fact present during the entire chase scene, and after seeing his family's ill-gotten fortune destroyed and his father killed, reappears to wage war on Dom (Finn Diesel), the leader of the world's best car thieves and international spies, vowing that there is no place for death when there should be suffering instead. His motive for revenge may be obvious, and the movie keeps reminding us of his anti-Dom antagonism whenever possible, but the ways in which Dante deals with his revenge on the Fast family are as eccentric as Dante himself. Only through technology and mercenary forces is he somehow able to do anything. He wants to make Dom suffer by hurting his family, but he repeatedly ignores opportunities to get his way in seemingly ineffective ways.
That freedom and randomness of the character requires the actor to be willing to exploit it in his performance, and Jason Momoa entered the set in full force. Putting aside how effective Dante is as a villain, the boundless energy of chaos that Momoa maintains throughout Fast X is a consistently enjoyable element. There's no other way to say it: Dante is a weirdo, and Momoa indulges him with enthusiasm. It's as if he's watched all the films in one sitting and then emulated Dom's manliness and predictable logic at every turn, whether in Dom's face or on his own. It's those idiosyncratic villain moments that set Dante apart from the other villains in the series so far, and Momoa deserves a lot of credit for preventing Fast X from sinking under the weight of the movie itself.
By comparison, Dom Toretto seems to drift from one moment of reflection on the meaning of family to the next, and Vin Diesel seems unconcerned whenever Momoa doesn't force him to push Dom in a different direction, rather than repeating what we've heard from him before.
And all of Fast X's complex car scenes don't manage to find their own identity either, which is hugely disappointing for a series known for finding new and interesting ways to move vehicles through time, space, explosions...and buildings, or even into space. , etc. Many of the action scenes from the previous films seem to have been reworked, remember when Hobbs and Shaw played tug-of-war with the helicopter? Well, now Dom will, but with two helicopters! Will this escalate matters? Yes. But does it offer anything new? no.
It's no good that a series known for its slick vehicular mayhem has made us feel that hand-to-hand combat (especially one involving Charlize Theron's Cypher) feels like a welcome change. Dante's sinister scheme to roll a bomb through Rome to the Vatican makes for the most satisfying action scene, thanks again in large part to Momoa's unpredictable behaviour, yet there's still plenty of film left that can't ratchet up the action any higher. Director Louis Leterrier doesn't do much in celebrating the extreme or melodrama elements the series is known for, leaving Fast X looking somewhat muddled in both areas.
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