No Surrender Cinema: F9: The Fast Saga
WARNING: This edition of No Surrender Cinema contains some spoilers about F9. If you hate that type of thing, then come back and check out the column once you’ve watched the film!
After the pandemic delayed its release, F9, the ninth installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise, is finally out of limbo and in theaters worldwide. After a year of being teased with trailers featuring speeding vehicles, rickety bridges, and John Cena’s first appearance in the series, yours truly finally got to see the film on opening night and wrote about it for you here immediately after viewing. Now that’s fast!
F9 starts off the way most latter day franchise entries do; our main characters are laying low, out of the public eye, but there’s trouble afoot and their friends pull them back in. Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are in hiding and raising Dom’s son Brian when Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) bring him the good news/bad news. Turns out Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), the gang’s government operative has captured Cipher (Charlize Theron returning as the villain from Fate of the Furious), only to be attacked himself. As fate (of the furious) would have it, Nobody wasn’t attacked by someone coming to rescue Cipher, but rather a group looking to use her knowledge for their own personal gain. This group just so happens to include Jakob Toretto (WWE Superstar John Cena), Dom’s long lost brother.
What’s that you say? This is the first I’m hearing about Dom having a brother? For all of the talk about family in the Fast franchise, why is this the first time anything involving Jakob has come up…and why is his evil? Well, it turns out that their father’s death in a racetrack crash was due to Jakob tinkering with dad’s car. After Dom serves his sentence for beating the other driver involved (after the guy insulted Jack’s memory and called the Toretto’s losers, so he had it coming), he returns to run Jakob out of town street racer style. Being the black sheep of the family motivated Jakob to mold himself into something more dangerous, so here we are, brother against brother with the fate of the free world on the line. It’s a storyline that Vince McMahon probably wishes he could have booked for Cena to play out in the squared circle.
While this is Cena’s first Fast film, F9 also marks the return of a central character. I’m not quite sure why this one was spoiled by the trailers, but the rumors of Han’s (Sung Kang) death were greatly exaggerated. That explosion at the end of Tokyo Drift, the one that was retconned to introduce Jason Statham to the series as a villain? Here it’s retconned to be Han faking his death at the behest of Mr. Nobody, because he was needed for a top secret assignment, one that links in to the current mission. Now our gang of heroes are on a head on collision with Jakob, his cohort Otto, and their crew of cronies so that the bad guys don’t gain control of Aries, a MacGuffin that allows its handler to hack into any computer weapons system online.
A lot of the major stunts and sequences were spoiled in the various previews that have played for the past year. Dom and Jakob have their big showdown, squaring off in a pulse-pounding brawl reminiscent of Dom’s slugfest with Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) back in Fast Five. A rickety bridge, a minefield, cars swinging through the air, and an excursion into space (yes, space!) That’s right, if you thought this series went off the rails went it evolved from street racing and hijacking, you’re in for a treat when you get to witness Ludacris and Tyrese take flight courtesy of a rocket strapped to an old Pontiac while they’re dressed like they belong at the bottom of a fishbowl. I feel like this scene is will serve as the inspiration for a concept album from them some time in the future. Maybe Luda can drop a verse about Chuck Norris kicking ninja ass in space on one of the tracks…unless he’s one of those humanoids who hasn’t witnessed the greatness of the Karate Kommandos cartoon.
Since the series has become completely formulaic and predictable at this point, relying on stunts seems to be the big draw. Gone are the days of DVD player heists and street races gone wrong. Dom and his crew are Mission: Impossible for the millennial crowd, and these situations come with the territory. Let’s be real here, neither of the live action GI Joe movies had anything as cool as a high speed chase across a minefield that ended with not one, but three cars careening over a cliff with various levels of success. The series has also become Diesel’s passion project, especially since the loss of co-star Paul Walker back in 2013. Though Walker is no longer with us, these films serve as tributes to him, and you can tell that Diesel and co. take genuine pride in keeping his memory alive by having his character Brian continue to be mentioned as a part of the Fast universe.
I enjoyed John Cena’s entry into this world as well, though admittedly I wasn’t convinced that he was this evil master assassin. Maybe it’s because he’s a naturally likable guy in everything he does, or maybe it’s my bias showing since it’s well known that he’s my “big brother”, but he just didn’t come off as a threatening menace. Oh, and for those of you who aren’t hip to the “big brother” reference, certain real life relationships and an infamous RAW segment have led to me being recognized as Cena’s little bro. So in some warped, reality-bending way, I guess that makes me a part of the Toretto family tree now too! I guess I better learn to drive stick sometime soon.
While it has not been confirmed if I’ll be appearing in Fast 10 yet (and if they don’t call that one The Last of the Furious it will be such a wasted opportunity), I can confirm that F9 is a film well worth your time. Spectacular stunts, adrenaline pumping action, and twists to the 20 year history of the Toretto clan and their inner circle will keep your eyes on the screen and your interest high. Don’t forget to stick around all the way until the end, because F9 does include an interesting epilogue that concerns two central characters. F9 is in theaters now, so burn rubber to the closest theater and enjoy 2 hours of high-octane action done by the masters.
