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I didn't have many notes on "F9," the latest installment in the "Fast and Furious" series, but one near the top of the first page could stand in for the others: "Oh, sure, why not?" 

That was in response to a moment showcased in trailers and ads, wherein street racer and thief turned globetrotting super-spy Dominic "Dom" Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) evades pursuers during a jungle chase by triggering the rocket booster on his souped-up vehicle, soaring off the edge of a cliff, and using a cable he's fired into a mountain on the other side to swing him and his wife and espionage partner Letty Ortiz ( Michelle Rodriguez ) to safety. Like Tarzan on a vine. That's the kind of film this is: an "Oh, sure, why not?" film. James Bond meets the Road Runner cartoons. Remember in "Commando," when John Matrix, held hostage by a dictator's goon on a commercial flight, kills him in his seat with a neck snap as the plane is preparing for takeoff without anyone noticing, then crawls into a landing gear housing and drops into a swamp conveniently located at the end of the runway? Or when the good guys in " Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom " leap out of a crashing plane with an inflatable yellow raft instead of parachutes, inflate the raft on the way down, plop onto a snowy mountain embankment at an angle that leaves them all unharmed, and slalom till they get to a river?

"F9" is like that. All of it. 

If, as more than one fan has noted, the "F&F" films have turned into an international, multicultural, hip-hop-friendly answer to James Bond, the last few have been Roger Moore-era Bonds. The only question is whether this new one is " Moonraker " or "Octopussy." I vote "Moonraker" because a satellite figures into the plot. I would describe said plot in more detail if I thought I could keep it straight, and if I thought it mattered, but it doesn't. Plot was never the reason people went to these films. The appeal lies in the chases and stunts, the bruising fights and mythic posturing, in the repeated invocations of [ rumbling Vin Diesel voice ] FAMMMM-LY , and in the soap opera/professional wrestling-style storytelling, which allows bad guys to become good guys and introduces new characters that we're told mean the world to an established character even though nobody in the previous films mentioned their name before.

In "F9," the character is Dom's long-lost brother Jakob Toretto ( John Cena ), who disappeared from Dom's life in 1989 after being blamed for a car crash that killed their car-racer dad. In the present day, Dom is living off the grid with Letty and their son when Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ), Tej (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ) show up to inform them that national security bigwig Mr. Nobody ( Kurt Russell ) captured their old antagonist Cipher ( Charlize Theron , introduced in " The Fate of the Furious "), but the plane taking her to prison was attacked by rogue agents and crashed in the fictional Central American nation of Montequinto. Cut to Montequinto, where the gang combs through the wreck while dressed as if they're going to a barbecue. Turns out Jakob is behind the crash and brought Cipher to his boss, a young, rich Northern European psycho named Otto ( Thue Ersted Rasmussen ). Otto wants to acquire and assemble two halves of a top secret device that can control the security networks of every country on the planet. He also has a dad who is referred to but never seen. (Cast Mads Mikkelsen in the tenth film, you cowards.)

The espionage aspect gets even more complicated from there. And, as in most entries in the back half of this franchise, none of the twists matter in any meaningful sense, except when they jack into the idea of Dom's band of brothers and sisters as an improvised family of outsiders, one that sometimes includes people related by blood but more often is based upon shared values, loyalty, and a willingness to die for the tribe. To that end, Diesel and Cena take the "long lost brother who did a heel turn" thing drop-dead seriously. They play it like it's grand opera. I guess this is the most admirable and risky way to play it—kudos to any actor willing to look ridiculous, which is constantly a risk in this series—even though there are times when you might recall that in other projects, both Cena and Diesel have been funny, and nobody asked them to even smile here. It's all dark-and-stormy, all the time. After a certain point Cena's scowling, glowering, and jaw-flexing gets a bit dull. You may start wishing the movie would skip ahead to the big confrontation between Dom and Jakob that Settles All Family Business. The concluding moments between the characters are moving, though, in a World Wrestling Entertainment sort of way.

The action set-pieces are thrilling and intentionally hilarious, though the digital effects and compositing vary in quality. Some shots bring fantastic panoramas and impossible stunts to life in a way that makes you believe they could happen. Others look like images from that horrible early aughts era when Hollywood filmmakers asked effects houses to do things the technology would not yet support. There's a gleefully deranged subplot about two-thirds of the way through that gives fans what they've been only half-jokingly saying that they wanted from the franchise for years now. And the Montequinto section suggests what might happen if Dom and company visited Jurassic Park (the CGI'd shots of cars and trucks on winding rainforest roads are so gloriously primeval that you wouldn't be surprised if the crew was attacked by velociraptors). 

What else do you need to know? There's a truck chase at the end that could've been an outtake from the 2007 " Speed Racer ," and a long action scene where a character rappels from one end of a city to another, or so it seems because the sequence goes on for what feels like half a day, the rappeller defying both gravity and city planning a la Spider-Man. Helen Mirren has a cameo as Magdalene Shaw, mother of Deckard, Owen, and Hattie Shaw, a sixtysomething jewel thief who dresses like Helen Mirren and drives like Frank Bullitt. Dom rides shotgun as Magdalene roars through London at night. Magdalene delivers exposition with a sexy smirk. Dom asks clarifying questions. They might as well be sitting in a coffee shop. 

Characters you thought were dead turn out not to be (again, a standard trope in both wrestling and soap operas) and characters who are presented as evil turn out to be good, or at least not beyond redemption (ditto; the franchise also goes the other way when it feels like it). Like the Bond films and " Mission: Impossible ," these are superhero movies where nobody wears a cape, although the red leather pants that Cipher sports when she's imprisoned in a glass box have a Catwoman-goes-to-Studio 54 exuberance. (You can tell director Justin Lin loved the leather pants because he keeps Theron in them all the way through the film. Theron delivers many of her lines while looking over her shoulder, the better for the audience to admire how much time she spends at the gym.) 

Gibson and Bridges make a splendid comedy team, as always, and Rodriguez grounds her scenes with Diesel in emotional reality, giving them a weight that the rest of the film doesn't have, and mostly isn't interested in. Diesel holds the thing together through sheer mopey majesty. Middle-aged Dom is a depressive he-man, a sad sack doom-racer. Lin photographs him as if he's a posthumous statue of himself. It's startling to realize how long Diesel has been playing Dom and how much the character has changed. Dom is Diesel's Rocky Balboa, his Indiana Jones. In the first movie, he was an antihero, a badass who was good when circumstances required it (like his other great recurring character, Riddick). At some point, though, maybe after the last film he did with Paul Walker , Diesel started to seem bigger, older, and more tragic: Dom weighed down by responsibilities to his family, and Diesel perhaps by his commitment to a franchise he has a stake in.

Now Dom swaggers more deliberately, brokenly, gut-first, his face radiating hard-won wisdom, his hamhock arms arced in a pincer shape. He's Popeye the Sailor cast as Atlas, setting the world down only to kick ass. He kicks much ass in this one. There's even a scene where Dom fights a dozen guys barehanded. At one point in the melee, Lin, practically winking at us, cuts to an overhead shot of the combatants piled on Dom like children piled on an adult. Dom has stopped moving. Is he dead? Hell, no. Bodies will fly through the air like potato sacks. The character and the franchise are indestructible. 

Available in theaters on June 25.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and language.

145 minutes

Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz

Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce

Ludacris as Tej Parker

Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey

John Cena as Jakob Toretto

Sung Kang as Han Lue

Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto

Charlize Theron as Cipher

Helen Mirren as Magdalene 'Queenie' Shaw

Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody

Vincent Sinclair Diesel as Younger Dom

Vinnie Bennett as Young Dom

Finn Cole as Young Jakob

Thue Ersted Rasmussen as Otto

J. D. Pardo as Jack Toretto

Michael Rooker as Buddy

Cardi B as Leysa

Bad Bunny as Lookout

Writer (based on characters created by)

• Gary Scott Thompson

Writer (story by)

• Alfredo Botello
• Daniel Casey

Cinematographer

• Stephen F. Windon
• Greg D'Auria
• Dylan Highsmith
• Kelly Matsumoto
• Brian Tyler

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F9 The Fast Saga Reviews

When car mayhem and traveling to space become dull, you know you've made a wrong turn.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2023

While not the best in the franchise, it truly might be the wildest. It’s entertaining, it’s stupid, but it’s got family. Family is the heart & soul here once again

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

F9 takes its ridiculously absurd action sequences to intolerably nonsensical levels, all while trying to tell an overlong, messy, unimaginative story surrounding one of the most generic cliches.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jul 25, 2023

The action scenes fall flat - almost every single one of them - and the CGI looks like it was borrowed from Sharknado. The dialogues are painfully awkward, and the script should've been burned by the first person who read it.

Full Review | Jul 22, 2023

...a predictably broad premise that’s employed to periodically watchable yet mostly underwhelming effect...

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 19, 2023

I can’t help but wonder why Fast and Furious 9 would not have sufficed as the title here. At least 2 Fast 2 Furious has a goofy pizzazz to it. Naming conventions aside, the most recent entry does nothing to take the series in a new direction...

Full Review | May 2, 2023

As a theatre-going experience, I can’t recommend F9: The Fast Saga enough.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 13, 2023

F9 is one or two too many explosions and one or two too many quips away from achieving its goal of as an action flick with an intriguing plotline and stalls out as an overly self-aware stunt fest with a storyline you wish you had more time with.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 16, 2023

To be fair things like logic, reality, even physics simply don’t apply to these movies. You have to turn off a portion of your brain and let some obvious questions and concerns drift off into the ether.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2022

If you hate the logic smashing exploits of muscle-bound gearheads, theres nothing here to convince you otherwise. However, for the many people who made this one of the biggest franchises in the world, it delivers the outrageous nonsense you paid to see.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2022

At heart, this still carries everything this franchise is known and loved for and continues to show that there are more miles left in this already impressively long franchise.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

The most daring entry in the franchise that is almost impossible not to walk away from with a massive smile on your face.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2022

At its very best, there's something positively life-affirming about F9, the fifth Fast & Furious movie directed by Justin Lin.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 21, 2021

Maybe it matters not, but the impulse to pump hype, hot air, bum warmers and a full rack of ribs into something - whether a movie theatre or Vin Diesel, so that it is barely recognizable from its former, more modest self - is everywhere...

Full Review | Nov 9, 2021

Overall, Fast & Furious 9 is a bloated disappointment that tries too hard to be serious and silly and I hate to say this - this ninth film is the worst entry I've ever seen since 2009's Fast & Furious 4.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 20, 2021

Physics? Bah! Who needs it? 'F9' is gloriously brash and stupid, like eighteen different Saturday morning cartoons mashed into an amorphous ball of idiocy. This is a compliment.

Full Review | Sep 17, 2021

The explanation for Han's survival is as nonsensical as the caper that sends Roman and Tej where no F&F cast member has gone before, if you catch my (Tokyo) drift.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 10, 2021

The important thing is to have as many ingredients as possible, no matter how well they combine with each other. More is more; caution is for cowards. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2021

Years from now, F9 will settle into its position as the Fast & Furious franchise's forgotten entry - Rock-less, ridiculous, and ultimately irredeemable.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2021

Jakob is a self-serious villain and the film treats him seriously too, unlike F9's self-aware and fun-laden approach elsewhere. It's just not the right move. Look to The Suicide Squad and how James Gunn makes better use of [John] Cena.

Fast & Furious is back with an absolutely bonkers new adventure.

How could F9 possibly shock and awe audiences after all that’s already gone down over the past 20 years? They do it by turning hard into familiar Fast & Furious terrain of macho melodrama and full-throttle plot twists, then taking the car stunts to absolutely outrageous new heights. In his latest, returning director Justin Lin brings plenty of his signature character moments and skill for captivatingly capturing complicated stunt sequences, making for a sequel that is both outlandish and big-hearted.

Vin Diesel returns as Dom Toretto, who is living off the grid with his ride-or-die partner-in-crime, Letty (a steely Michelle Rodriquez) . That is until a cryptic message pulls the crew back together for another save-the-world mission. They team up with Roman (a comedic Tyrese Gibson), Tej (a smirking Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges), Ramsey (a sprightly Nathalie Emmanuel) and Mia (Jordana Brewster), then go up against their scowling new foe, Jakob (John Cena). Their rivalry leads to brutal one-liners, high-tension flashbacks, untold collateral damage, and countless unspoken civilian casualties.

The screenplay by Lin and Daniel Casey weaves in repeated plot twists and familiar faces. More secret family members are unearthed and another beloved crew member is–thankfully–brought back from the dead. Sung Kang reprises the role of Han , bringing a cool charisma, sexy smile, and gunslinger swagger that shows he’s ready for a spinoff of his own. (Perhaps one on Han’s lost years?) Also returning is Charlize Theron as the nefarious hacker Cipher, plus a slew of crowd-pleasing cameos from the extended Fast & Furious family. However, the biggest thrills come from the absolutely bonkers action sequences. (Though the laws of physics are name dropped, they need not apply here!)

How do you make a car chase that one-ups everything Fast & Furious fans have seen before? Lin and his team turn to new spins on the series’ best ideas: An opening jungle chase throws us back into the wild world of the Toretto clan, offering edge-of-your seat excitement and nail-bitingly close calls. Then, we see a callback to the incredible bank heist of Fast Five , where a massive vault became a devastating towed flail. This time, powerful magnets pull and push cars —and plenty else—through bustling streets and buildings, while our heroes barrel toward a climax that takes them to a whole new frontier and spectacular level of suspension of disbelief.

What's your favorite Fast and Furious movie so far?

As these movies have grown from LA street races to car vs submarine showdowns, its characters have essentially evolved into superheroes. F9 addresses this with a funny bit in which a rattled Roman argues they may be literally invincible. How else could they not only live through all the adventures they’ve been through, but also do so “without a scratch?” In every frame, Dom’s crew looks like they could be posing for character posters or perfume ads: gorgeous, cool, and stoic, no matter what impossible scenario they’ve just been hurled through. Lin leans into the unflappable fantasy, and it makes the melodrama elements all the more exhilarating.

Without revealing spoilers, let’s just say there’s serious beef between these characters. Diesel and Cena prove a perfectly matched pair, and their moments together sizzle. Cena’s movie career has been marked with comedy, but this former pro wrestler knows how to deliver a fierce frown and furrowed brow for masterful intimidation. Crafty low lighting causes his strong features to cast sharp shadows, making him look all the more fearsome. Meanwhile, Diesel's jutting jaw and hard stare has their faceoffs sparking with macho wrath. They are earnest yet repressed in a way that makes such scenes deliciously campy, and Lin knows it. There’s a sly glee throughout F9, from the ludicrous stunts, to the convoluted soap opera plot, to a spirited one-liner about a villain’s great dental plan. Lin knows that Fast & Furious movies are mad fun not just because of the action, but because of how unapologetically outlandish they get at every turn—all while staying straight-faced.

Beyond the wild fun within, F9 also boasts phenomenal cinematography. Director of photography Stephen F. Windon previously worked with Lin on three Fast & Furious films, so it’s little wonder that his coverage of the complicated action sequences is strategic and striking. Even when cutting between multiple locations, a horde of characters, and a parade of different vehicles, the geography and action is always in focus and clearly cut. (Props to editors Greg D'Auria, Dylan Highsmith, and Kelly Matsumoto.)

The Dumbest Moments From the Fast & Furious Movies

However, more stunning are the quiet moments, breaths between action and exposition, in which Windon starkly tells a story with framing. For instance, when Jakob first blazes onto the scene, he does so in a car that looks similar to Dom’s, down to the racing stripes across its hood. An aerial shot shows the vehicles in a perfect circle of tire marks, diametrically opposed foes. With one sharp image, Windon illustrates their connection and their distance. Then, bounding from London to Tokyo to Cologne and beyond, Windon gives us breathtaking landscapes, both urban and wild. He makes the most of each, turning every location into a character as glossy and gorgeous as our flawless heroes. This film isn’t just fast and furious, it’s also breathtakingly beautiful.

Justin Lin knows exactly what makes a great Fast & Furious movie. He’s directed several. For the latest, he re-teamed with cast and crew to allow this fantastic film series do what it does best. He delivers bold plot twists, grit-teethed gravitas, and out-of-this-world action to create the kind of cinematic spectacle that demands to be seen on the biggest screen with the loudest sound system possible. F9 proudly pitches audiences into the shotgun seat on one more absolutely wild ride packed with thrills, laughs, and—in the end—a heartwarming message about family. Plus, we finally got justice for Han. Those who’ve never reveled in the logic-free fun of this franchise may well eye-roll at its unapologetic excesses. Fair enough, these are movies that refuse to take themselves all that seriously. But what more could fans of this high-octane entertainment ask for?

More Reviews by Kristy Puchko

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‘F9’ Review: Objects in Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Vin Diesel returns to lead his fast and furious family on another dangerous and ridiculous mission.

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‘F9’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Justin lin narrates an explosive sequence from the latest film in the “fast and furious” franchise..

Hi, this is Justin Lin, director of “F9.” So here we have a sequence where we’re setting up the rules for what’s about to come, which is the landmines. There’s two threads here. “’Peligro Minas,’ What does that mean?” “Tej, How fast we got to go to clear them?” There’s one where Dom and the family are being chased by the Montequinto military. And the other one is the fact that the only way out is through this land mine, and they’re trying to do the math. Part of this is making sure that we’re tracking every character and they’re role within the family. I think it is important to set this up early in the film. And also the geography of it is important. The one thing that I found is a challenge in Thailand when we were shooting, is that I went there for the jungles of South Thailand but when we went for the scout, I realized so much of it has been converted to palm plantations. So I had to readjust as we were planning. Here, we have the aerial. This is the shot that took me three months to find the exact right location, because I wanted that butte in the foreground, but at the same time I needed the land mine in the background. The land mine sequence, I wanted to start the film strategically with that as we’re introducing new elements to our visual language. Here is the intro of our antagonist, Jacob. So, it actually was a lot of fun to design. It wasn’t a lot of CGI or anything like that. It was just about having drivers drive through explosions. This, I think for the crew, is a lot of fun too. Because for me personally, it doesn’t matter if it’s the 200th explosion of my career, it always feels viscerally just as impactful. Those are real explosions. Obviously we build the cars with protection and everything. My job is to always try to push everything and as a general rule no matter what, we always try to do everything practical first. Even at the end of the day, if it ends up being reference for something else, that to me is kind of the recipe for how we do these things. “Roman, you good?” “My ass is en fuego!”

By A.O. Scott

If the “ Fast and Furious ” movies are about anything — besides cars, of course — it’s family. Not biological kinship, as Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), the franchise’s patriarch, older brother, wise uncle and ideal husband, never tires of reminding his crew, but the deep ride-or-die bonds of loyalty and solidarity.

That’s the sentimental core of the series, and “F9,” the latest chapter (named after everyone’s favorite laptop key), leans into it so hard you may wish you had a chart to remind you who is who and how they’re all connected. A lot of familiar faces show up — Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, of course — along with a few that fans might not expect to see. No spoilers here! There are also some notable absences, several out-of-the-blue cameos (is that you, Cardi B?) and new family members to get to know.

One of these is Dom’s brother, Jakob, played in early manhood by Finn Cole (alongside Vinnie Bennett as pre-Diesel Dom) and in macho middle age by John Cena. The two were estranged after a family tragedy, and more than 30 years later the embittered Jakob has become an international techno-villain employed by a sneering, megalomaniacal rich guy named Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen). Otto, whose father is the dictator of an unspecified Eastern European country, is eager to acquire a gizmo that will bring him world-dominating powers and paternal approval.

As was the case with the “Avengers” Infinity Stones and the Harry Potter horcruxes , the gadget needs to be assembled from far-flung parts: two miniature geodesic domes and a mysterious “key” to unlock their terrible power. Accordingly, much of “F9” is a busy chase, with Dom and his pals pursuing the competition all over the world — Tbilisi, Cologne, London, Tokyo — and even into orbit. The engines whine, the tires squeal, and the laws of physics are flouted with an impunity that would make Chuck Jones proud.

The spirit of Wile E. Coyote hovers over the action, which splits the difference between preposterous and sublime. Giant magnets are deployed in midair and in city traffic. Vehicles skid, slam, swerve and fly. Flashbacks to Dom and Jakob’s early years wielding wrenches in their dad’s pit crew at a blue-collar California racetrack recall the origins of the “Fast and Furious” universe in a simpler style of action filmmaking.

The director Justin Lin, happily brandishing all the expensive digital tools at his disposal, makes “F9” feel scrappy and baroque at the same time. The identity of the brand rests on twin foundations of silliness and sincerity, both of which are honored here. Diesel, a rigorously humorless onscreen presence, plays Dom as the designated man of feeling, with a history of grief and sorrow resting on his ripped shoulders. Rodriguez’s Letty is his platonic partner in sorrow. Ludacris and Tyrese are the cartoonish court jesters, whose banter provides a running metacommentary on what the whole series means.

Not that it really needs explaining. “F9” is only the second movie I’ve seen outside of my house since early 2020, and the first in a semi-full theater. People clapped at the end of some of the over-the-top action sequences, laughed at the corny jokes and maybe felt something when Cena and Diesel worked out their sibling issues. I certainly did, and not entirely in spite of myself either. There are certainly better movies in the world, including better “Fast and Furious” movies, but this one is not a bad reminder of what movies are for.

F9 Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Screen Rant

F9 review: fast & furious returns to form with biggest action yet.

F9 returns to the heights of Lin's best Fast & Furious franchise films, combining big heart and bigger action while deepening its themes of family.

After launching with The Fast and the Furious in 2001, the car-focused action-adventure film series arguably took a couple of sequels before it truly found its footing as a franchise, but it certainly did - to the tune of over $5 billion worldwide box office gross for the series - and now the ninth installment is hitting theaters this summer with F9 . Justin Lin returns to direct the movie after helming Tokyo Drift , Fast & Furious , Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6 , working from a script he co-wrote with Daniel Casey ( Kin ). Continuing the story of Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto, the ninth Fast & Furious movie sees him forced to confront his past when his estranged younger brother Jakob (John Cena) resurfaces. F9 returns to the heights of Lin's best Fast & Furious franchise films, combining big heart and bigger action while deepening its themes of family.

After the events of The Fate of the Furious , Dom and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) have essentially retired from their lives of crime and covert ops. But when Mr. Nobody's (Kurt Russell) plane is attacked and a new dangerous weapon is stolen, they're pulled back into the fray to help their friends Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) to recover it. Things are made more complicated when Dom learns his younger brother Jakob is working with his old enemy Cypher (Charlize Theron) to assemble the weapon. Because of the family connection, Dom brings in his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). The group is also reunited with Han Lue (Sung Kang), who they believed to be dead, but who actually holds the key to their mission. With Dom's estranged brother at the heart of the problem their team is facing, he'll be forced to confront the decisions that led him to banish Jakob from the Toretto family and ensure those choices don't put his new family in jeopardy.

Related:  Every Upcoming Vin Diesel Movie

In terms of F9 's story, it's just as overwrought as the other recent Fast & Furious franchise entries, with an overly complicated villain plan and a new piece of technology that necessitates Dom and his team's specific skills for the job. Like Fate and Fast 7 , F9 works better if the viewer doesn't try to make sense of, or really follow, the plot too closely - it's simply the vehicle (pun intended) that loosely ties the various action scenes together. In that regard, it's perfectly serviceable. To complement the main plot, F9 also explores Dom and Jakob's history through a series of flashbacks that expand on the death of their father during a race when they were both young. Their story is much more predictable, with a twist that's easy to see coming, but F9 leans into the heartfelt emotions while Diesel and Toretto bring the right amount of gruff charm so it doesn't become overly cheesy. The sibling rivalry trope is an old one in film and television, and  F9 manages to pull it off in a compelling way, due in large part to the film capitalizing on the franchise's history already being deeply entrenched in family.

F9 is still an action-adventure movie about fast cars, though, and it delivers plenty of exhilarating high-speed action sequences. In true Fast & Furious franchise fashion, F9 continues to, if not entirely, flout the rules of science, playing fast and loose with them in order to bring some fresh ideas to its chase scenes. Landmine dodging, magnets strong enough to carry cars and trips to space are all included within the sequences of F9. Plus, there's a positively delightful sequence that finally gets Helen Mirren's Queenie Shaw in the driver's seat of a chase scene. That and other sequences make for an extremely fun, albeit completely unbelievable, experience. Still, while the ideas in  F9 's big third-act action scene are bigger than any other Fast & Furious movie, the sequence itself doesn't feel quite as epic as past films. It's not necessarily to the detriment of the movie, though, as it allows the character stories, particularly those of Dom and Jakob, to come to the forefront. As a result, F9 strikes a nice balance between heart, humor and action that ensures the movie doesn't feel like a shallow actioner while still feeling fresh.

Ultimately, F9 is meant to be a summer blockbuster - a popcorn movie that's big, silly fun and in that sense, Lin delivers exactly what's expected. The Fast & Furious franchise truly hit its stride around Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6 , when Lin effectively took a buddy action series (that swapped out its "buddies" a few times) and expanded its entries into ensemble vehicles. While the more recent movies may have struggled to maintain that same fun group dynamic, and supplanted its lost characters with bigger action scenes, F9 is a return to form with Lin back at the helm and stronger character stories present throughout the movie. It has all the big, fun action of the best Fast & Furious movies, while still offering something deeper to ensure the core of F9 continues the franchise's theme of family.

As a result, F9 is perhaps the perfect movie to anchor the summer 2021 blockbuster season. Its action lends itself to being seen on the big screen, so it's certainly worth catching F9 in movie theaters (where theaters are open and providing moviegoers feel safe), especially longtime fans of the franchise. With a number of character returns in addition to the most high-profile one in Han, F9 utilizes the Fast & Furious franchise's long history to great effect. Some of F9 's retconning of that same franchise history - particularly in regard to Han's return and Jakob's addition to the Toretto family - may not work for everyone, but those who go into the film expecting a fun ride will get exactly that. F9 is the epitome of summer blockbuster - it's big fun and that makes for a wholly enjoyable moviegoing experience.

Next: F9 Movie Trailer

F9 starts playing in U.S. movie theaters Friday, June 25, 2021. It is 145 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and language.

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F9: the fast saga1.

‘F9’ Review: A Less Furious Sequel Coasts Along on a Family Plot, as Vin Diesel and John Cena Play Battling Toretto Brothers

With a story that looks back more than forward and a space sequence that comes close to jumping the shark, the fifth entry in the series directed by Justin Lin gets stuck in franchise overdrive.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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It leaked out a while back that the new “Fast and Furious” film, “ F9 ,” would feature a sequence set in space — a setting that sounded, on paper, like it might be the logical culmination of all those spectacular gravity-defying leaps that the cars in this series are perpetually making. Yet I’m not sure if anyone will be prepared for what happens at the climax of “F9.”

Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), who’ve been quibbling all through the movie, are behind the wheel of a red Pontiac Fiero that’s been outfitted with a rocket launcher. The car is hitched to the back of a space shuttle, which is preparing to send them into orbit; as they fumble around with makeshift yellow space helmets that look like they belong on a pair of 1960s aquanauts (all that’s missing is the rear-projection fakery), the sequence turns into pure cheeseball comedy. Roman, with his you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me skepticism, and Tej, with his numbers-based quizzicality, are a funny duo, and that’s fine, but as the two head into space, with weightless candy wrappers flying around the car, all to accomplish a mission that doesn’t strike us as either plausible or necessary, the scene inspires the wrong kind of funny — the sound of an audience checking out of the movie, because the movie suddenly seems ridiculous.

We’re thinking: Is this when the “Fast and Furious” series jumps the shark?

Not so fast. At that moment, there’s no doubt that the movie walks right up to the shark, takes a good hard look at it, maybe even climbs aboard it, but doesn’t totally, fatally jump it. For one thing, there’s way too much going on apart from that borderline ludicrous space-camp interlude. But I’m not sure if that’s the kind of close call “F9” wanted to be remembered for.

The space sequence doesn’t last too long, and doesn’t pretend to be important. A more serious issue with the movie is that while it’s got a standard is-this-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it? MacGuffin of a plot — can the villain put together the two halves of a small geodesic dome called Project Aries, which will allow him to control all the world’s computers and advanced weapons systems? (just writing that sentence, the suspense is eating me alive) — too much of what happens in “F9” feels stuck in the past.

That villain, for instance, is the brother of Vin Diesel ’s Dominic Toretto. In a series of flashbacks, we see how both of them, when they were teenagers in 1989, saw their sports-car-driver father get blown to smithereens in a high-flying accident during a California speedway race. From that moment on, the brothers became estranged (the reason the accident happened is why), with Dom, played as a kid by Vinnie Bennett, growing up to become the loyal chrome-domed growler of fuel-injected velocity we’ve come to know and love, and his brother, played as a kid by Finn Cole, growing up to become the jealous, glowering, pumped-up but petulant Jakob ( John Cena ), who wants to rule the world in order to top his older brother.

Beyond that, the movie keeps looking back over its shoulder — at all the spy-team-as-family relationships the series has established, and at one key character we thought was deceased (the actor’s name is right there in the credits, but I’ll refrain from mentioning him). You could say that when a blockbuster film series is 10 movies — and two decades — old (“The Fast and the Furious” will celebrate its 20th anniversary in just a month), it has more than earned the right to look back. But the way franchises generally work is that good sequels look forward, or at least fixate on the present. In the ’80s, when Hollywood was going sequel-crazy but hadn’t quite figured out how to do it yet, a lot of bad sequels (like “Poltergeist II: The Other Side” and “Rambo III” and “Back to the Future Part II”) spent too much of their time meditating on what had already been. That was the films’ way of saying to the audience, “Remember when you all made this a hit?” Rarely is that an effective strategy.

The last “Fast and Furious” film, 2017’s “The Fate of the Furious” (I’m not counting the mano-a-mano spinoff “Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw”), had a present-tense thrum and the hook of a good espionage thriller, with Toretto set up to look like he’d betrayed his comrades. The director, F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”), did a sleekly sensational job. “F9” is directed, once again, by Justin Lin, who put his extravagant stamp on “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and made the next three entries in the series, but considering that “F9” is Lin’s fifth “F and F” film and his first one in eight years, it goes through the motions with more energy than intoxication.

Okay, but what about the so-thrilling-it’s-palpitating action? Early on, our heroes, in several different vehicles, are in the midst of a rather ho-hum chase through the island greenery of Montequinto (watching it, I flashed back to “Return of the Jedi” and thought: Forests, for some reason, are not great backdrops for high-speed chases). They finally reach one of those endless stretching bridges made of rope and wooden slats. When the first car goes over it, leaving the bridge falling to pieces in its wake, it’s probably the suspenseful high point of the movie. Then Toretto approaches what is now a mile-wide canyon, and crosses over it — by somehow driving his car so that it hooks onto the bridge’s dangling-rope remnant, which acts like a slingshot. The scene is so over-the-top ludicrous that it’s if the filmmakers were saying, “Let’s put what would have been the grand climax of ‘Fast and Furious 4’ in the opening half hour.” Good enough. But what do you do for an encore?

“F9” features several sequences in which a truck that contains a super-powerful magnet goes rushing through the streets of London, attracting all sorts of metal, including a car, which is somehow less boss than it sounds. The movie also has a lot of hand-to-hand combat — too much of it, I would say — that happens aboard speeding vehicles. Why is this supposed to be exciting? I get it when the fighters are on the roof of a bus (then it’s all about: How did they do that? I can see it’s the real John Cena! ), but when they’re just bashing each other inside the empty canister of a military truck, we might as well be watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie on wheels. Cena’s Jakob is teamed with several other baddies: the return of Charlize Theron ’s tigress-sleek Cipher, plus the millennial Eurotrash slime Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen), who’s bankrolling the whole thing. But even with all three, the threat they pose feels generic.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, a successful franchise will essentially morph into a different series. Over time, the “Mission: Impossible” films became Bond films. The “Fast and Furious” films have become “Mission: Impossible” films. But “F9” isn’t constructed around an exciting mission. It’s built around Vin Diesel and John Cena playing out the angst from the Toretto brothers’ past. The family plot “works” (even as you’re aware of how thinly written Cena’s character is), but it’s not enough of an anchor; it’s more like an excuse. This series didn’t need more “heart.” It needed everyone onscreen to get up to speed.

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, New York, May 17, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 145 MIN.

• Production: A Universal release of an Original Film, One Race Films, Perfect Storm production, in association with Roth/Kirschenbaum Films. Producers: Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel, Justin Lin, Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, Joe Roth, Clayton Townsend, Samantha Vincent.
• Crew: Director: Justin Lin. Screenplay: Daniel Casey, Justin Lin. Camera: Stephen F. Windon. Editors: Dylan Highsmith, Kelly Matsumoto, Greg D’Auria. Music: Brian Tyler.
• With: Vin Diesel, John Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Charlize Theron, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell.

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‘F9’ Review: Justin Lin Gets ‘Fast & Furious’ Back on Track with the Saga’s Biggest and Most Ridiculous Movie Yet

David ehrlich.

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The first time that the “Fast & Furious” franchise threatened to stall out, Justin Lin drifted into the picture and jump-started it with a simple philosophy that would transform these movies into a global juggernaut: “If you ain’t outta control, you ain’t in control.” Over four films that ranged in quality from generation-defining blockbusters to “Furious 6,” Lin helped a semi-grounded saga about illegal street racers shift gears into a bonafide cinematic universe without losing its soul.

The stakes got higher and the stunts grew more absurd with every installment, but even as the story foamed into the kind of high-octane soap opera suggested by the series’ title — amnesia, fake deaths, and inexplicable retcons were all in play before Lin bowed out — it always felt as if these meat-headed spectacles recklessly expanded in a way that also allowed them to circle on the characters’ core essence. The dumber things got, the more sincere they became: It was a dolly-zoom effect that rendered the sight of Vin Diesel driving a car out of an exploding military plane at the end of an 18.37-mile-long runway into a heartfelt illustration of a #Family under fire.

When Lin handed over the keys in 2015, however, the “F&F” saga careened toward the brink of madness so fast that James Wan and longtime franchise screenwriter Chris Morgan could only race to build new roads before the whole thing went over the edge — a plan that went so poorly they ended up equipping the cars with parachutes instead. Morgan and “Fate of the Furious” director F. Gary Gray found themselves in an even more precarious situation two years later, as they reeled from Paul Walker’s death and a pissing contest between Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. The result was an empty shell of a film that betrayed the core of the franchise by suggesting that family maybe wasn’t quite sacred to Dominic Toretto. Without that foundation, a Corona-drinking Los Angeles gearhead jumping his Dodge Charger over a Russian nuclear submarine suddenly felt kinda inauthentic. The series was outta control because it wasn’t in control.

And so, with “ F9 ” Lin returns to the driver’s seat to steer “F&F” back onto solid ground. Only this time, he isn’t trying to jump-start a stalled race car so much as regain command of a runaway freight train the size of the Chrysler Building. Once again, Lin gets the job done not by slamming on the brakes, but rather by speeding things up to such a ridiculous extreme that the velocity starts to hold everything in place.

It isn’t always pretty. The first “FaF” without Morgan since 2002, “F9” is a scattered mess full of weightless CGI that whiffs on some crucial moments and doesn’t even get out of neutral until the final hour. For all of the cartoonish flair Lin demands, this $200 million tentpole is bound to disappoint anyone hoping for an action movie that can match the skill of “Fast Five” or the unleaded personality of “Tokyo Drift.” That said: Watching Michelle Rodriguez drive over landmines faster than they can explode beneath her motorcycle feels like snorting nitrous straight from the tank after a year of being forced to pretend that movies are even remotely the same at home.

But if “F9” works — and it does, at least by the time the Coronas are popped open — it’s because Lin understands how these movies work best as feature-length dolly zooms that push in on Dom’s vulnerability by widening out to an inhuman scale. This is, by FAR, the biggest, wildest, gravity-defying-iest “Fast and Furious” installment yet, with one scene toward the end guaranteed to make your jaw drop at the gloriously brain-dead chutzpah of it all. Lin and Daniel Casey’s screenplay can stretch the action to farcical heights because it offsets the spectacle by drilling into Dom’s character more deeply than the franchise ever has before. Okay, “deeper” might be too strong a word — it implies some measurable degree of previous depth — but from its opening moments “F9” is determined to explain how this deeply weird human being came to have oil in his veins.

The story begins in real “Days of Thunder” territory circa 1989, complete with Michael Rooker working as a pit boss at the California speedway where Dom’s father blows up in a wreck so over-the-top that you wouldn’t blame either of his sons for laughing about it. That’s right, Dom’s had a little brother this whole time. His name is Jakob, he’s played as a young man by Finn Cole, and Dom — in a rush to judgment that doesn’t quite square with his #Family credo — decides that Jakob must have killed their dad on purpose because he was the last one futzing with his car.

This is all ancient history for the Dom we know and love; the kind of guy who lives his life a quarter mile at a time doesn’t spend a lot of time looking in the rear-view mirror. That’s especially true now that Dom and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez, kicking more ass than she has in the last eight films combined) are living off the grid in peace with their toddler Brian. The son has become the father, and Dom would rather let that circle stay unbroken. You’ll never guess what happens next: Tej (a sleep-walking Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges), his moron friend Roman (Tyrese Gibson, taking things dangerously close to Lloyd Christmas levels of dumb), and the beautiful hacktivist who puts up with them (Nathalie Emmanuel) show up to kick off a wild-goose chase that starts in the invented Central American country of Montequinto and winds its way through a mixed bag of stunning locations and sound stages so obvious they make Tokyo seem like a fictional place.

The gist is that Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody disappeared in a plane crash along with Charlize Theron’s evil Cipher, meaning that two of the franchise’s flimsiest characters have potentially been wiped off the map (the other, played by Scott Eastwood, must have died on the way back to his home planet). For some reason, Dom and the gang see this as a bad thing and decide to investigate, which kicks off a chase that feels like the “FaF” equivalent of Mutt Williams swinging along jungle vines. It ends with the adult Jakob taunting Dom and stealing half of a MacGuffin that unlocks every computer in the world or something (“or something” does a lot of heavy lifting in this movie) before driving off a cliff and being caught mid-air by Cipher’s magnetized stealth fighter jet. That’s all in the first 20 minutes old and Lin is just warming up.

The plot never evolves much further than “Jakob is now John Cena and he’s seriously overcompensating for growing up in Dom’s shadow.” Their dad once cautioned his sons that “It’s not about being the stronger man, it’s about being the bigger one,” and both of these swollen himbos seem to have taken that adage literally (adult Dom wears the same shirt he did as a teen, only now his biceps have exploded it into a vest). Forward momentum is hard to come by in a movie that must spend most of its time trying to undo the mistakes of the previous two, but Lin and Casey offset dead-end trips to a zillion different places when the script reaches into the past.

The flashbacks don’t quite make “F9” feel like it’s running along parallel timelines, and Dom has a more nuanced relationship with certain vowels than he’s ever appeared to have with his brother, but the back-to-basics vibe of these street-racing scenes make an intriguing contrast against the modern-day shenanigans. Lin continues the magnet motif in the movie’s best action setpieces, including a highly charged getaway that drafts off the bank vault chase from the end of “Fast Five,”  and it feels as though “F9” is suspended between the polarities of its past and present. The son who Dom was pushes against the father he wants to be, and he finds that his precious notion of family is his greatest strength and most vulnerable weakness rolled into one. Family is what keeps him alive, but it’s also what might get him killed.

Of course, death is seldom final in the “F&F” universe and “F9” does everything it can to make that bug feel like a feature. It’s no secret that Han is back, though the script hardly does him justice (Sung Kang is still the coolest, and manages to survive the human plot device he’s forced to bring with him). But the movie is also self-reflexively preoccupied with immortality, from a silly conversation between Roman and Tej to Dom’s fixation on family as an expression of forever. Lest you think I’m being too cute about this, the camera literally appears to plunge into Dom’s soul at one point.

This is a movie that sling-shots so far past self-parody that it loops all the way back to something real. It hardly seems to matter that Cena is such an unconvincing villain that Jordana Brewster seems to flinch at his acting in one reaction shot (she’s back too, by the way), or that Jakob’s snooty financier could’ve been written out altogether, or that this franchise will never be able to achieve its former heights as long as Cipher is still around — a nemesis so bland and enervating she wouldn’t even be worthy of “Hobbes & Shaw.” No, what matters is that “F9” continues to make the saga feel bigger while bringing it home. The world of “F&F” has never felt more outta control than it does here, but for the first time in a long time it feels like it’s drifting in the right direction.

Universal Pictures will release “F9” in U.S. theaters on Friday, June 25, 2021.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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Review: With ‘F9,’ the ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise mostly recovers from its days of blunder

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Before a recent screening of “F9: The Fast Saga,” a theater representative welcomed us back to the movies — “us” being an audience of mostly masked journalists, scattered in semi-distanced formations before an Imax screen — and made the usual requests that we turn off our phones and avoid divulging any of the movie’s big secrets. Exactly how secret any of them can be considered at this point, more than a year after the revelation-packed first “F9” trailer dropped, is an open question. As is often the case with megabucks entertainments like this one, the major studios demand of the press a level of professional discretion that their own marketing departments have been happy to disregard.

Not that I’m really complaining. After more than a year away from theaters, it’s reassuring to return to these shared rituals of professional moviegoing, to say nothing of the time-honored if mostly surprise-free conventions of a new “Fast & Furious” flick. And what this latest chapter is selling, above all, is reassurance. From the minute the Universal logo flashes across the screen and roaring engines flood the soundtrack, a sense of blessed familiarity seizes hold. Fifteen months after the pandemic set in and “F9” was abruptly yanked from 2020 release schedules , the movie’s mere arrival signals a return to normalcy — if by normalcy you mean hot cars, strained wisecracks, gravity-defying stunts, logic-defying revisionism and a well-worn clan of renegade motorheads.

These of course include mainstays such as Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson and Nathalie Emmanuel, bringing their various areas of expertise to bear on the tire-burning, heist-rigging plot, plus a couple of second-banana gearheads (Lucas Black and Bow Wow) whom you may recall from “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.” But the most important player from that flavorsome 2006 movie — an attempted series reboot inelegantly reverse-shoehorned into the overarching storyline — is surely the charismatic Sung Kang, whose reappearance here as the presumed-dead Han has set off meticulously coordinated waves of fan excitement.

Even if the phrase #JusticeForHan means nothing to you, don’t worry about it: Just sit back, relax and enjoy the gravelly intonations of Vin Diesel as the gang’s ringleader, Dominic Toretto. Having settled down in remote seclusion with his wife, Letty (Rodriguez), and young son, Dom has become ever more reflective with age (as anyone would with a head that shiny). But when we first meet Dom in “F9,” he’s played by the younger Vinnie Bennett in an explosive race-track prologue set in 1989 Los Angeles. Within moments, Dom’s beloved father has gone off to that great big speedway in the sky — a life-altering tragedy that Dom recounted in the very first “The Fast and the Furious” movie. Apparently he left out some crucial details, like the existence of a long-estranged younger brother, Jakob, who may have been responsible for their dad’s death.

Jakob is played in flashbacks by Finn Cole and in the present day by that human colossus John Cena, and his latest scheme proves nefarious and far-reaching enough to bring Dom out of retirement. “Family,” Dom’s touching if tiresomely over-repeated mantra, thus takes on a more literal flesh-and-blood meaning. Still, for all the retconned sibling rivalry nonsense, Jakob is basically the latest iteration of a role previously filled by Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham : the semi-redeemable antagonist brought in to raise the stakes, smash things up and keep Dom’s (and by all accounts , Diesel’s) ego in check.

Their dynamic may be familiar, but Diesel and Cena are hilariously well matched. When the Toretto brothers go at it with fists and firearms, they resemble nothing so much as warring twin sequoias: mighty, soulful and wooden. The circumstances behind their reunion — involving a downed plane, a sneering Charlize Theron, a fictional Central American republic and some items from the discount bin at MacGuffins “R” Us — are barely worth unpacking here. They serve their purpose, which is to send Dom and his pit crew on another globe-trotting mission to save humanity and the fossil-fuel industry, all while stringing together a bunch of increasingly desperate answers to the question “What else can we make a car do?”

In “F9,” directed with practiced flair and controlled chaos by the franchise veteran Justin Lin , a car can survive a spin through a live minefield, swing from a vine over an open gorge like Tarzan, hop a ride with a passing aircraft and even blast its way into [spoiler redacted]. As Lin chases his characters around Tokyo and London, pausing for a glamorous rendezvous with Helen Mirren and a too-quickly-abandoned ramen dinner with Rodriguez and Brewster, he sustains a nice balance of the awesome and the absurd. He repeatedly abuses the laws of physics (I look forward to the explainers on what “F9” gets wrong about super-powered electromagnets) without entirely demolishing the laws of cinematic coherence.

It seems almost churlish to note that Lin never quite matches the delirious highs of his “Fast Five” (2011), the capstone of the series and the picture that transformed a lucrative line of street-racing muscle-car movies into full-blown vehicular heist thrillers: less “Days of Thunder,” more days of plunder. Since then, it’s been more like days of blunder: The James Wan-directed “Furious 7” had its poignant pleasures, especially its moving salute to the late Paul Walker . But its 2017 follow-up, “The Fate of the Furious,” was a rudderless bore that upped the outlandish set pieces but abandoned some of the series’ core narrative principles.

What Lin restores in this mostly solid entry (which he co-wrote with Daniel Casey, both stepping in for longtime series screenwriter Chris Morgan) is a sense of emotional continuity. In returning to the foundations of “Tokyo Drift” and bringing Han back into the picture (with an explanation no more tortured or implausible than, say, a car flying between skyscrapers), he resurrects one of his more intriguing creations and brings his history with Kang full circle in ways that hark back to their first feature collaboration, “Better Luck Tomorrow” (2002). He also reaffirms the “Fast & Furious” franchise as one of Hollywood’s most lucrative serialized soap operas, one that tries to keep and renew faith with the audience by returning, again and again, to its own convoluted narrative history.

Like the most durable soaps — though with more tattoos, Coronas and broken glass — these movies inhabit a fantasy world where bitter grudges can be resolved within minutes, multiracial harmony is no big deal and the dead rarely stay dead for too long. All of which is reassuring, as noted earlier, in ways that are scarcely lost on “F9” itself: The characters even maintain a running commentary on whether, given all their death-defying antics, they might be trapped in some kind of elaborate simulation. It’s a slyly self-conscious touch that suggests that, after two decades, nine films, a spinoff and nearly $6 billion in global spoils, even the “Fast & Furious” movies may finally be reaching the limits of their ability to bend metal, time and reality indefinitely. Stay tuned.

‘F9: The Fast Saga’

Rated: PG-13, for sequences of violence and action, and language Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes Playing: In general release

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F9 review: The Fast saga almost gets back on track

Returning director Justin Lin rediscovers the franchise's over-the-top sincerity, but problems persist in this way-too-huge sequel.

Darren is a TV Critic. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFranich for opinions and recommendations.

"How in the hell are you not dead?" asks Tej ( Chris "Ludacris" Bridges ). It's very early in F9 , and several fast things have already happened furiously. Mournful motorlord Dominic Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) and his amazing automobile acrobats are hunting spyplane wreckage in some Central American jungle. "We do not want to cross paths with the military here," explains hacker Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ), before two separate militaries arrive. Everyone drives a vehicle that expresses their inner being. Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ) rides a jeep so armored its tires do a harmless bunny-hop when landmines explode underneath. The car's too big, like Roman's ego. It almost crushes him: Irony.

As he stumbles away from the flaming wreckage, Tej asks how Roman is possibly still alive. I love how Gibson mumbles an incoherent response, something like "uhhhUUUHHhhhh." That's what I say when anyone asks me how in the hell The Fast and the Furious isn't dead. Every other ongoing movie series is based on some kind of something: fantasy novels, comics, residual George Lucas wonder fumes, toys, the extremely dubious argument that there should be more than two Alien movies. In contemporary franchise Hollywood, the best way to be successful now is to have already been successful a generation ago. That's not very American, even if it's how America works. So I will forever cherish how an immortal car family became a billion-dollar industry by sheer force of Diesel will. This saga always blazes a new trail, even when it takes a wrong turn. But how will you ever fly if you don't try driving off a cliff?

There have been wrong turns, though. It's been four years since The Fate of the Furious trapped Charlize Theron on an evil airplane, and two years since the spinoff Hobbs & Shaw let two middle-aged non-comedians riff about impregnating a frenemy's little sister, ho ho ho. Both films left you feeling nothing was happening constantly, which also describes the bored-hysterical global mood between F9 's initial April 2020 release date and its delayed arrival this week.

Many moviegoers will come back to theaters for this. Appropriately, "return" is a key theme. Longtime Fast director Justin Lin departed with 2013's Furious 6 , which memorably re-killed Sung Kang's laconic Han . They both come home in this new entry. So does Jordana Brewster. Her Toretto sister rejoins Dom to face their long-lost brother Jakob ( John Cena ), an international carsassin who schemes to become "the god of damn near everything."

First, F9 returns to the dawn of the whole Fast idea. Twenty years after Dom delivered a monologue about watching his father die nasty, F9 begins with Jack Toretto (JD Pardo) zooming around 1989 racetrack. What happens to him is written in the scriptures. What you don't expect are ongoing flashbacks to young Dom (Vinnie Bennett) and little Jakob (Finn Cole). Theirs is a tale of vengeance and betrayal, King Hamlear Macbethello starring Cain and Abel and tank tops. Suffice it to say, they really put the "lie" in "family." In the present, the brothers battle across the globe. They fight on rooftops, through buildings, onto cars, off those cars over a bridge onto other cars. That's all just one scene, and I haven't mentioned the magnets.

Inventing a new sibling out of thin air is how soap operas fill time in season 27. One amazing thing about F9 is that this Hail Mary twist kind of works. Diesel is at his best when he seems to be struggling internally with repressed tragedies from last century. Dom so barely resembles Jakob that the dialogue winks at a "mixed bloodline." Still, Cena's the first Fast antagonist since Dwayne Johnson who's big enough to bodyslam Diesel. That physical threat packs a visual punch. Whenever they're together, you remember the muscular craftsmanship Lin brought to his earlier Fast films. It's an ever-so-slight grounding that let you believe in continent-long runways and crashing trucks flipping safely over human heads.

Lin co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Casey. Their story should theoretically have more focus, because the ensemble's a bit smaller. Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody is only glimpsed a couple times. Theron appears for a few short scenes in the last glass prison cinema should ever allow. Johnson's sealed away in his spin-off. Paul Walker's unfortunate death means Brian O'Conner is stuck at home with the kids, a workaround I choose to read as a profound call to action: This action dad takes parenting seriously , man! The female characters have more to do (he wrote suspiciously, worrying that their subplots feel very sub indeed). Ramsey finally drives a car. So does Helen Mirren's Lady Shaw. Mia pairs up with Michelle Rodriguez' Letty to fight bad guys using everyday kitchen utensils. Brewster spent a couple sequels devotedly pregnant behind a keyboard. Now, at last, she hits somebody with a frying pan.

I missed Lin's steady hand in the recent CGI-heavy installments. F9 has a lot of wrestling duels inside of moving vehicles. You can follow the tight-quarters combat even when you forget wh y they're fighting. I also missed Lin's natural generosity, the way he insistently makes minor characters shine like major stars. He joined the franchise with 2006's endearing offshoot Tokyo Drift , and some Tokyo Drift ers reappear here. Fifteen years later, they've grown into… experimental vintage car scientists, if that's a job? They're paid to strap rockets onto things that don't usually get strapped to rockets. A bit of self-expression there, maybe, from a director who works hard finding weird ways to blow things up.

F9 sure sounds like a lot of fun. Why is it only a little fun? There are way too many magnets, which as a whole car-swooping conceit are only cool about 47 percent of the time. The bigger issue is that Han's resurrection isn't as awesome as it should be. The character was killed by Jason Statham's Shaw, who joined the hero team with barely any reference to that time he murdered everyone's cool friend. This mistake requires some kind of reckoning. F9 brazenly turns that showdown into a sequel tease.

That see-you-next-movie shamelessness reveals some deeper problems afflicting the Fast saga in its cinematic-universe incarnation. Something special drained out of this series when the heroes transformed from crusading car-heisters into world-saving explodo-spies. Much of the F9 story happens because Mr. Nobody tells various somebodies to do various somethings. I don't want my heroes to do things because a generic espionage manager tells them what to do. I want them to do things because they feel a passionate need to do those things: Because they need money, because someone killed the love of their life, because the love of their life is back from the dead with amnesia, because Carter Verone is Miami's cruelest smuggler!!

Worth pointing out that Jakob's motivation is just goofy enough to be interesting. He's trying to get out of his brother's shadow; he seeks world domination because his world is so utterly Dom-inated. He's almost a great villain. I wish that space wasn't so crowded. Jakob's annoying partner, Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen), seems to be Putin's son. Cipher remains pointlessly evil, an attitude without a character. The first people to attack the Toretto crew are a fictional Central American army. We used to make fun of '80s movies for stuff like this, before people forgot '80s movies were bad. I know people who think all the Fast s are stupid, and those people are stupid. But the best Fast s blend unhinged ridiculousness with over-the-top sincerity, which works best tethered to big characters feeling big emotions. F9 briefly foregrounds Dom and Letty struggling with new parental responsibilities. Then everyone gets handcuffed to a deathly fetch the glowing green god-computer mission.

There are bright spots. Edinburgh looks lovely. Dom has to hold off a couple dozen henchmen with his bare hands. His solution would be biblical, if Samson didn't need so much hair. There are a few scenes where Ramsey explains plot things with a giant computer; I swear I spotted a Super Mario Question Block on her big screen. Roman's early brush with death gets him thinking about all those other times he walked away from fatal catastrophe without a scratch. It's very meta, yet Gibson finagles sweet confusion into the self-awareness. He can't figure out why nobody else is freaking out. The film's best moment is a close-up on Roman's face, positively enraptured by the most ridiculous thing Fast & Furious has ever done.

Lin will stick around for two more sequels, which will allegedly end the mainline series. His work here steers the franchise in the right direction, but it's not a complete fix. The title doesn't lie. F9 isn't bad, and it's not good. It's just fnine. B-

F9 opens in theaters on June 25.

Related content:

• 2 Brothers 2 Furious: How Vin Diesel and John Cena are redefining Fast family in F9
• Watch F9 brothers Vin Diesel and John Cena explain what it takes to be a Toretto
• Jason Statham reacts to Han's F9 revival: 'They better bring me back'

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‘F9’: A Long-Overdue Family Reunion Brings Lots of Drama

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

F9 : a computer key whose purpose I cannot, off the top of my head, properly justify or describe — and also a movie which, for everything that’s genuinely fun about it, suffers much the same fate. It’s a Fast & Furious movie, so, at minimum, you know what you’re going to get — to a point. That’s no small feat: There’s much to be said for the creature comforts of franchise familiarity. If you’re already in love with this crew of hyperskilled riff-raff, headed by an increasingly Stallone-esque Vin Diesel , the movie plays into that love. If you accept that the central gambit and compromising folly of a nine-movie (and counting) action franchise is that the only reasonable option at this point is m ore — more ridiculousness, more cameos and callbacks, more self-awareness, more backstory worthy of the decade-plus-long soap opera this series has essentially become — F9 will go down especially easy. That’s all most of us want out of these movies in the first place. And with it landing back in theaters after a year-plus of theatrical crisis, F9 is basically set up to hit it out of the park for anyone wise enough to keep their expectations humble. 

You could, of course, disagree with studio logic. You could say: Nine movies in, we can trim the fat. We know these people. We know it’s a franchise all about family ; many of us have probably played the drinking games — a shot for every time someone says family , uses a synonym for family , alludes to even having a family — to prove it (and were hospitalized, accordingly). London, Tbilisi, Montequinto, Cologne: The location porn, with mandated accompanying riffs in the music to guide us through those swooping, sky-high establishing shots over skylines and mountaintops, is also a dependable pleasure. In sum: We know how it works.

But we also know that, at its highest highs, the announcement of a new entry in the Fast franchise is like hearing the Mister Softee jingle a few blocks over and knowing it’ll be at your house in the time it takes to beg your parents for spare dollar bills. The promise is a treat. Has it always paid off? Well, no… But the devilishly clever trick at the heart of this franchise was, after all, to take the money shot of most any other movie of this stripe — the chase scene — and make it the entire movie, a slick inverse on the genre’s great pleasures: all climax, (almost) all the time, with some charismatic side-hustling to the tune of comic relief and telenovela-lite drama stitching it together. 

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On that basic front, with that format in mind, even if the promised action in F9 could benefit from a scalpel in the editing room, and less repetition of the same establishing gags, and even as those gags feel increasingly borrowed from the elsewhere, the movie hits at least half of the right marks. F9 throws everything it can think of our way. Jungle chases, land mines, utter havoc wreaked on the streets of London — the favela chase redux, but on cobblestone streets — multiple layers of villain holding the strings to it all, flashbacks to an explanatory past, and the pure, unlikely delight of seeing John Cena play the beta to Diesel’s alpha. 

But when you make the money shot the main attraction for four, then five, then nine movies, you run into a problem with the stuff stitching it together. F9 gets bogged down. Way, way down. It becomes a lot of movies at once. Some fly, some don’t, but the sum effect is that it winds up spinning its wheels, its hyperkinetic delights (all I’ll say is: magnets) awash in too many strands of background drama. Entire scenes of comic relief, mostly resting on the shoulders of Chris Bridges and Tyrese Gibson, feel detached from what actually matters to the story — as if what we’re watching are actually the results of contractual negotiations about screen time, populated by going-nowhere jokes, that don’t even try to hide the strings. (Compare these dull-witted scenes to the seamless product placement: You know it isn’t arbitrary that you’re seeing bottles of Corona being brandished so shamelessly, but the Fast franchise’s characters are so obviously Corona drinkers that it doesn’t feel strange.)

The plot? Oh, there’s a plot alright. Multiple blasts from the past (one fairly literal); a plan for world domination using technology that no one tries to overly explain because it’s not really the point; the gang getting back together again; the gang and the world-dominators-to-be duking it out on vehicles. You’ve got a strand of this movie — for my money, the best strand of the entire affair — in which Charlize Theron, reprising her role as the cyberterrorist Cipher, gives us her best Hannibal Lecter, holding mens’ balls in a vice grip from within a glass box, from which she properly reads everyone in sight for dirt (people: she’s seen your report cards), advancing the plot through obvious manipulation but stripped of all needless exposition. She’s just here, making eunuchs of everyone in sight with psychotic relish, and yet somehow the plot can’t move forward without her.

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Compare that to some of the rest of the soap opera this movie has in store and — well. Some of it works. The Torretto family history that frames the movie, with a quite convincing Vinnie Bennett as a young Dom, isn’t so bad; it sets up a neat, primal, and efficient central drama on which the movie could happily have coasted. Does it all, ultimately, come down to two men — brothers — finally hugging each other? Yes! Is that ridiculous? Absolutely — and it’s the part that works. F9 isn’t good at being so judicious, however. Other resurrections of the past must ensue. Other dramas, other secrets. We’re nine movies in, and we’ve reached the point where the wheels are spinning off the axes, we’re choking on the fumes of burnt rubber, we’re watching things get a little desperate. I will never, not once, complain about seeing Michelle Rodriguez 1) in a movie; 2) fighting in a movie; 3) fighting on a motorcycle in a movie. Suffice it to say F9 could have used more of that, less of the rest.

On the one hand, it’s become an annoying trend in our conversations about pop art for moves that are willfully, straightforwardly bad to get immediately reclaimed as campy   (to say nothing of our constant elision of the difference between camp and kitsch). But on the other hand, F9 reaches so far beyond itself, sticks its hand in so many pots, that a Fast 9 in Outer Space joke becomes not only plausible but… literal. That’s legitimate camp territory, and the movie tries to make fun of itself, there and elsewhere, by signaling self-awareness. But do we need all these signals? Cut to the chase — literally. By the end of F9 I was intermittently entertained, but mostly wary. There’s, what, two more of these coming? And already we’ve stretched it all so thin, thrown every strand of pasta in the pot against the wall. For a movie that manages, still, to occasionally be a good time, that’s not a good sign. Not at all.

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F9: the fast saga, common sense media reviewers.

Crash-filled action sequel takes itself too seriously.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Like others in series, this movie promotes ideas o

It's hard to call the main characters role models,

Tons of cartoonish violence, crashes, explosions.

Two scenes feature scantily clad women dancing. Va

Uses of "s--t," plus "a--hole," "ass," "dumbass,"

Mentions of Tootsie Roll candy. Bottles of Corona

Characters share beers, sip whiskey in public spac

Parents need to know that F9: The Fast Saga is the tenth movie in the Fast & Furious series (if you include Hobbes & Shaw ), with the same level of incredible stunts, destruction/carnage, and focus on the ideas of family and teamwork. This one falls a little short of its immediate…

Positive Messages

Like others in series, this movie promotes ideas of family and loyalty, but characters don't always seem to trust each other, and they're all prone to excessive violence without many consequences. One character talks about surprising fact that, despite all the dangerous stuff the team does, they rarely get hurt.

Positive Role Models

It's hard to call the main characters role models, given the sheer destruction they cause (with no consequences), but they do risk their lives to save the world and protect their loved ones, and do stand up against impossible odds. The women are smart and self-sufficient, the crew is diverse, their teamwork as strong as ever. Characters discuss what it means to be part of a world-saving team of heroes. Dom and Letty leave their little boy behind, seemingly without anyone watching him.

Violence & Scariness

Tons of cartoonish violence, crashes, explosions. Person killed in flaming car crash. Lots of guns/shooting. Characters fall from high places, crashing on hard objects. Person's neck snapped; people fall and get caught on hanging chains. Reality-defying stunts. Tons of fights, punching, kicking, martial arts, hitting with hard, blunt objects, etc. Lots of things smashed, destroyed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two scenes feature scantily clad women dancing. Vaguely sex-related jokes about doing things to "compensate."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Uses of "s--t," plus "a--hole," "ass," "dumbass," "pr--k" "hell," "damn," "pissing," and "shut up." Two uses of "Goddamn" and one reference to "God" as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Mentions of Tootsie Roll candy. Bottles of Corona beer shown. Mentions of Harry Potter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Where's Waldo , and Minions. Mention of Crocs shoes. Energy drink shown (label obscured by glare).

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters share beers, sip whiskey in public spaces.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that F9: The Fast Saga is the tenth movie in the Fast & Furious series (if you include Hobbes & Shaw ), with the same level of incredible stunts, destruction/carnage, and focus on the ideas of family and teamwork. This one falls a little short of its immediate predecessors, but Fast fans will no doubt be racing to see it. Expect tons of over-the-top cartoonish violence, crashes and explosions, guns and shooting, deaths, fighting, punching, kicking, martial arts, hitting with blunt objects, and large-scale destruction. Language includes a few uses of "s--t," plus "a--hole," "ass," "hell," "damn," etc. There's a vaguely sex-related joke (about "compensating") and two scenes of scantily clad women dancing. Characters share beer and drink whiskey in public spaces. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (19)

Based on 8 parent reviews

Such a good movie

What's the story.

In F9: THE FAST SAGA, Dom ( Vin Diesel ) and Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) are living the quiet life in a remote farmhouse, raising Dom's son. Tej ( Chris "Ludacris" Bridges ), Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ), and Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ) arrive, sharing a garbled message from Mr. Nobody ( Kurt Russell ). Someone has tried to steal a piece of a deadly doomsday device. Dom is shocked to discover that the thief is his estranged brother, Jakob ( John Cena ). After a harrowing chase, Jakob escapes with the first piece. Next, he must retrieve the second piece and then discover the "key" to operating it. Little does anyone in Dom's group know that the "key" is connected to someone from their past.

Is It Any Good?

Like most of the movies in the Fast series, this one has half a dozen surprising, exciting adrenaline-fueled moments, but the road between them is long, uninteresting, and nonsensical. Directed by Justin Lin -- his fifth entry in the franchise -- F9: The Fast Saga seems to lack the creative juices responsible for the mind-blowing stunts in the eighth film (the wrecking ball, the submarine, etc.). Here, almost all of the action is centered around the varied but repeated use of electromagnets, pulling parked cars in front of moving ones, snapping guns away from villainous minions, etc. And some fight and chase scenes are unfortunately shot with jerky camerawork, making them less effective and more confusing.

At least an escape across a rickety rope bridge, a trip to outer space, and other chase scenes are still fun. The movie seems content to prop up these scenes by bringing back various old characters at key moments, hoping that their mere recognition will create a response. Lin especially seems to be on a mission to revisit his first entry in the series, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift . But it's all Dom's story, dealing with his brother and his past (long flashbacks tell the story), and Diesel handles it with a grim, largely unchanging expression. When the Fast movies are at their best, they roll with the ridiculousness, but when they take themselves too seriously, as F9: The Fast Saga does, they tend to drag.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about F9: The Fast Saga 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it thrilling, or shocking? Are there any consequences? Why does that matter?

How does this movie continue on the series' theme of "family"? How is this one similar? How is it different?

How are women portrayed in the film? Did you notice any objectification? Agency? What messages does the movie's portrayal of its female characters send about women?

How does this movie compare to the others in the series? What makes the series so popular?

Are any of these characters role models ? How can they be heroes if they're destroying millions of dollars' worth of property? Can you think of other movies where "bad guys" are the heroes?

Movie Details

• In theaters : June 25, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : July 29, 2021
• Cast : Vin Diesel , Michelle Rodriguez , John Cena
• Director : Justin Lin
• Inclusion Information : Asian directors, Multiracial actors, Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Universal
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Cars and Trucks
• Run time : 145 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of violence and action, and language
• Last updated : December 10, 2023

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Movie Reviews

Review: 'f9' puts the pedal to the metal to restart the hollywood blockbuster.

Bob Mondello

F9 , the latest film in the Fast & Furious franchise is also the film that's supposed to restart the Hollywood blockbuster.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

A fast and presumably furious $212 million - that is what Vin Diesel and his hard-driving pals have made in China so far with their latest blockbuster. "F9" premiered overseas last month while waiting for pandemic-shuttered cinemas to open in the U.S. because, as its star says in an ad...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "F9: THE FAST SAGA")

VIN DIESEL: (As Dom) There's nothing like that moment when the lights go down, the projector ignites, and we believe.

CHANG: Now, in a moment, we'll talk about the enduring success of the nine-film "Fast Saga." But first, Bob Mondello reviews this latest installment.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: If you've seen the "F9" trailers, you've seen the film's first big set piece. Our motley Heroes have driven across a minefield somewhere in Central America, escaping unscathed because they're just so darn fast. And now Dom and his wife, Letty, are in a black sedan, pursued, as is their habit, by missile-shooting helicopters headed for what their map said was a bridge, one of those cable and plank things...

MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ: (As Letty) Where's the bridge?

MONDELLO: ...That we've already seen disintegrate. So as they approach the edge of a very high cliff over a very deep chasm...

RODRIGUEZ: (As Letty) No, no, Dom.

MONDELLO: ...There's just a single pylon left sticking up. Naturally, Dom aims for it and hits the gas. And wouldn't you know? The car catches on a metal cable as it goes sailing into space, swinging them around like Tarzan on a vine or maybe like a yo-yo on a string, landing them with a crash on a different cliff.

(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)

MONDELLO: The helicopter pilot assumes - not unreasonably - that they couldn't have survived and flies away.

RODRIGUEZ: (As Letty) Well, that was new.

MONDELLO: That is the idea, though after eight of these shindigs, new is getting noticeably harder to pull off, not that director Justin Lin, who's made four previous installments, is out of ideas.

TYERESE GIBSON: (As Roman) Man, we messing with magnets now?

MONDELLO: He just has to inflate them these days. So besides that swan dive off a cliff, we get an armored truck the size of a locomotive doing a somersault and a car launched into orbit.

LUDACRIS: (As Tej) Please tell me that's not a Pontiac Fiero strapped to a rocket engine.

JASON TOBIN: (As Earl) Impressive, I know.

LUDACRIS: (As Tej) No.

MONDELLO: And Vin Diesel's Dom and his team globe-trotting from Tbilisi to Monte Quinto - yes, I had to look that up - to save the world while dodging whole platoons of assassins, all of them breathtakingly bad shots.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAR CRASHING)

MONDELLO: Everything definitely grander in "F9," if less tied to any sort of real suspense - vast and spurious, maybe. The grandness is also unrelated to plot, of which there's quite a bit, mostly centered on family.

JOHN CENA: (As Jakob) Been a long time, Dom.

DIESEL: (As Dom) Little brother.

MONDELLO: Estranged by a tragedy in their youth, Dom and his supervillain-ish sibling, played by a tight-lipped John Cena, spend much of this reunion's 2 1/2 hours glowering at and pummeling each other. That probably sounds like more fun than it is - actually, most of this does, I'm guessing.

DIESEL: (As Dom) Crank it all the way up.

MONDELLO: Cars and comaraderie notwithstanding, though, there's bound to come a point when elaborately staged mayhem and even deliberately preposterous world domination fantasies just feel overdone. Give "F9" points for a real-world domination fantasy that involves getting people back into theaters. But here's hoping that once it's lured the crowds back, it will clear the way for "F10" to be less labored and more a labor of love. I'm Bob Mondello.

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• DVD & Streaming

F9: The Fast Saga

• Action/Adventure , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• June 25, 2021
• Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto; Michelle Rodriguez as Letty; Jordana Brewster as Mia; Tyrese Gibson as Roman; Ludacris as Tej; Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey; Charlize Theron as Cipher; John Cena as Jakob; Finn Cole as Young Jakob; Vinnie Bennett as Young Dom; Sung Kang as Han; Anna Sawai as Elle; Helen Mirren as Queenie; Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody; Lucas Black as Sean; JD Pardo as Jack Toretto; Isaac and Immanuel Holtane as Little Brian

Home Release Date

• September 7, 2021

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Living the fast life takes its toll.

But now, maybe, just maybe, Dom and Letty are ready to put their high-speed past in the rearview mirror and idle into happily ever after. They’re raising Dom’s boy, Little Brian, on a farm so remote it doesn’t even have cell service. Nothing but solitude and reflection from here on out.  

Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen.

It takes about five movie minutes before Dom’s old gang—Roman, Tej, Mia and Ramsey—drives down the dirt road to their farm. There’s a problem, of course. And this motley crew of former street racers is the only answer.

Seems a plane has crashed somewhere in a misbegotten third-world jungle. It was carrying half of a weapon that, well, would be the end of life on Earth as we know it if it fell into the wrong hands. (Again.) Their old pal Mr. Nobody has put out the S.O.S. for Dom and his crew to find it—and the other half, too—before the bad guys get their greedy, scheming mitts on the contraption.

But wait, there’s more! It seems their nemesis from the last time around, the ever-wily Cipher, is once again involved. Curses! She was supposed to be in a secure prison. Guess not. Surely that will tempt Dom to load up his shotgun, right?

Dom’s not interested. It’s time to settle down. To let the fast life coast into the past forever.

Not so fast.

As he watches a grainy video of the commandos who hijacked the plane before it crashed, Dom notices something. Something very personal. Very significant. Very … family .

Turns out his estranged brother, Jakob, is entangled in this mess, too, a telltale dangling cross in the video identifying him.

A long-lost brother gone bad. An old enemy resurfaced. The end of the world?

Yeah, time to make sure the ol’ Dodge Charger’s nitrous tanks are topped off.

Positive Elements

The Fast and the Furious franchise has its share of now-predictable problems, as we’ll see. But equally predictable—in a good way—is its steady emphasis on family, both in the traditional sense and in the way that close friends can become a sort of family, too. Dom and his crew see each other as more than partners in speed. They take care of each other, no matter what. As we’ve seen in previous entries in this franchise, family is paramount to the patriarch Dom and his friends.

This time around, some key family-oriented parts of Dom’s past get filled in. We’re introduced to his brother, Jakob, when both brothers are much younger and serving as pit crew for their racecar-driving father. A tragic, fiery accident claims their dad’s life, and Dom eventually comes to believe that Jakob played a twisted role in that accident. Dom disowns his brother, telling him never to come back to their family—essentially the worst “curse” he could have uttered in a clan where blood and fealty are the highest value.

As the story unfolds, though, we learn that Dom’s treatment of his brother played a key role in why he’s since gone so, so bad—even as the hope for his possible redemption dangles like the cross hanging from a rearview mirror.

An old mechanic encourages Dom to relinquish his bitterness toward Jakob, saying, “You gotta make peace with the past if you want hope for the future.” A flashback finds Dom and Jakob’s dad dispensing another homespun pearl of wisdom when he compares taking care of a vintage hotrod to taking care of your family. “Build it right,” he says, “take care of it. And it’ll live beyond you.”

It goes without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that Dom and his crew will go to any lengths to stop the bad guys here, including Dom being willing to sacrifice everything if it means Letty can escape the clutches of rifle-waving goons who have them trapped.

Spiritual Elements

You wouldn’t think that a franchise based on fast cars, daring stunts and ammunition aplenty would have much room for a spiritual message. But just as we’ve seen in other installments in this franchise, spirituality does indeed turn up again here.

Dom’s preschool-aged son, Little Brian, asks his dad early on, “Where is God?”

“In your heart,” Dom tells him.

“He’s in your heart, too,” Little Brian says sweetly.

The end of the film features the now-expected family meal where someone says grace. Dom invites Little Brian to pray, saying, “You ready to say grace?” “But I don’t know what to say,” Little Brian objects.

“It’s easy: Just say what’s in your heart.”

There’s not a ton of theological depth here. But the acknowledgement of God in these scenes is personal and heartfelt, and it lends a surprising poignancy to this otherwise adrenaline-fueled story.

Someone else says of a deceased character, “She’s watching over us from heaven.” Dom and Jakob’s crosses, as well as one on a church, get plenty of screen time, too. Another scene takes place in St. James Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland.

A scene played for self-aware winks finds Roman wondering if Dom and his crew are merely lucky or whether they’re somehow in fact invincible. His friends laugh him off; but Roman notes that his coat has 14 bullet holes in it, and he’s still unscathed. That question resurfaces again later when Roman and Tej seem certain to perish … but don’t.

An advanced, weaponized communications system is called Project Ares, named after the Greek god of war.

Sexual Content

Dom and Letty (who are now married) kiss. Letty’s penchant for tank tops remains constant. A couple of scenes feature large groups of females wearing various kinds of revealing outfits, with leg, cleavage and midriffs all on display. One of the bad guys talks about being “turned on” by Cipher’s creepiness.

Violent Content

When I was growing up, one of my favorite TV shows was The A-Team . Bullets flew. Cars raced. Aircraft crashed. And Hannibal and his team always came out unscathed, not unlike cartoon characters, really.

The same is true here. The violence—be it car chases, gun battles, driving off cliffs, rolling down mountainsides, dodging (or not) land mines and air-to-surface rockets fired from drones—is constant. And though our heroes end up with a bit of dirt and blood on their faces, they’re pretty much unscathed (lending, it would seem, some credence to Roman’s hypothesis about their ridiculous invincibility.) It’s just another day at the high-octane office, even when that office is at times literally in orbit. (The proverbial shark actually gets jumped into outer space here, but I’ll say no more because it really doesn’t matter.) Indeed, sometimes beloved characters who were thought to be dead even turn up afresh, to everyone’s shock and surprise.

At one point as Dom, Letty and the gang race around bullets and boulders to evade the bad guys, I leaned over to a friend I was watching the film with and whispered, “None of them are wearing seat belts.” Indeed, Dom can roll a car off a cliff (or an armored bus, for that matter), have the think explode in a fireball and crawl out seemingly no more sullied than if he’d just gotten done mowing the yard.

In that sense, F9: The Fast Saga feels as cartoonishly, laughably ridiculous in its high-dollar stunts and explosions as any entry in the franchise.

But if Roman escapes with 14 bullet holes in his jacket, well, the bad guys aren’t nearly so invincible. The body count here is high, as unnamed, uncared-for henchmen get mowed down aplenty in sanitized shootouts. Their vehicles explode. Sometimes explosives get affixed to them, literally blowing one poor sap up (albeit behind the veil of a parachute, to spare us any gore at all).

We see multiple intense fistfights and martial arts

Vehicular carnage is even more profound. There’s no concern for fleeing pedestrians or those unfortunate enough to be on the road when Dom and the baddies clash. Suffice it to say that this franchise’s car budget likely eclipses whatever paycheck Vin Diesel and his famous friends took home for this one.

Perhaps the most emotionally wrenching moment in the film is when Dom and Jakob’s dad is involved in an accident that sends his stockcar high into the air, into the track’s protective screen and ends in a furious fireball that claims his life.

Afterward, a rival driver comes to pay his respects, the one who caused the accident. Dom picks up a wrench and beats him with it—an attack we hear but do not see. Police arrive shortly thereafter to take Dom into custody (and later prison), and it’s implied that he murdered the other driver.

A painful flashback shows a young girl watching her parents as they’re assassinated by a bomb in their car.

A throwaway scene in the credits features yet another old enemy brutally assaulting a punching bag with fists and feet. Then he unzips it to reveal a badly pulped man inside covered in bruises and blood.

Crude or Profane Language

Cipher crudely describes Yoda (yes, that Yoda) as “a puppet with someone’s hand up his a–.”

We hear a dozen s-words and two uses of “frickin’” as a stand-in for the f-word. There’s one pairing of God’s name with “d—n,” and two uses of “pr-ck.” Another dozen or so uses of “a–” are joined by one use of “a–hole”; four or five uses each of “h—” and “d–n”; and one or two uses each of “b–ches,” “p-ss” and “bloody.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Characters drink beer and champagne at multiple social gatherings.

Other Negative Elements

We see a flashback to an illegal Southern California street race in Dom and Jakob’s youth.

Despite the film’s superficially spiritual sheen, forgivness isn’t a virtue that Dom embraces quickly or easily, and we see how his bitterness toward Jakob drives a relational wedge between them with tragic consquences.

In 1977, the Fonz infamously “jumped the shark”—literally, he waterskied over a ferocious fish—on the ABC sitcom Happy Days . It was supposed to feel … daring? Relevant? Incredible? Mostly it was just silly , spawning a beloved cultural meme that we still use to this day when a franchise seems to be trying too hard to maintain its edge.

The Fast and the Furious franchise may have jumped the shark in F9: The Fast Saga . I’ll spare you the spoilerly details, but you’ll know it if and when you get there. Let’s just say for now that it involves some of Dom’s street-racing crew becoming … astronauts .

Then again, I’m not sure it’s really possible to jump the shark in a franchise like this one. Dominic Toretto (played by the delightful, ever-scowling Vin Diesel) and his friends have long since evolved from street-wise street racers fighting criminal elements into a mashup that splits the difference between James Bond and a superhero movie.

The filmmakers know it, too. Roman’s “soliloquy” about being invincible tells us that everyone’s in on the joke, drawing ever closer to self-parody.

But if you’re still on the Fast and Furious bullet train as a fan, you probably don’t care. You’re here for explosions, stunts that would make Tom Cruise blanche, more explosions, some nitrous and Vin Diesel scowling. (See previous.) This movie delivers all of those things—sometimes eliciting a howl of laugher along the way—as Vin and crew drive all the way to the bank.

At some point, fans will likely grow weary of how hard this franchise has to work to top itself. We had a submarine last time around. This time, well … space . Maybe the next one will take place on the moon. Then again, gravity never seems to be much of an obstacle for Dominic Toretto, so the next installment (teased in the end credits) will very likely deliver more of the same—the same violence, the same profanity and the same outlandish fun that fans and families have navigated since this series’ inception two decades ago.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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'F9' Movie Review

It's hard to look at the 20-year-old 'The Fast & the Furious' and see the beginnings of a blockbuster franchise, but here we are. And if the series has moved past illegal street races and into heist and spy movie territory, that’s all for the better. As this rogue's gallery of street racers has become an unstoppable team of vehicle-based super agents, the movies in the franchise have increasingly raised the stakes for our heroes, physics and reality be damned. And you know what? It's worked, including the latest chapter 'F9.'

Where do you go after taking on a tank, a cargo plane, and a submarine? I won’t spoil anything here (although you’ll get some hints from the trailer), but it’s pretty impressive how director and co-writer Justin Lin takes the series to new heights while acknowledging the increasingly insane action sequences our heroes find themselves in.

Stream & Watch 'F9' Full Movie Online

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An action film series centered on illegal street racing and heists.

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F9: The Fast Saga Parent Guide

Every five minutes, this movie gets more unwatchable and the raging imbecility of its plot more apparent..

In Theaters: Dom's peaceful retreat is interrupted with a new mission. He and his crew must retrieve top secret tech from a downed spy plane before it falls into the wrong hands.

Release date June 24, 2021

Run Time: 145 minutes

Get Content Details

The guide to our grades, parent movie review by keith hawkes.

Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) is out of the super-spy business, spending his days raising his son Brian (Isaac Holtane, Immanuel Holtane) with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) in almost complete isolation. But when Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) turn up with a mission, he doesn’t have a choice. Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russel) sent them a message: His spy plane has been hijacked and crashed with some top-secret tech aboard. If that tech ends up in the wrong hands it could spell disaster for everyone on Earth. And when Dom’s long-lost brother Jakob (John Cena) turns up to claim it for those very wrong hands, it’s down to Dom and the crew to save the world…again.

I would gladly have paid ten times the small fortune asked for tickets these days to have every memory of this movie wiped from my poor, bruised brain. This is the cinematic equivalent of bashing your head into a brick wall for the sole purpose of giving yourself chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I suspect that may have been part of how this film was written. Every five minutes, it gets worse. Dialogue gets more awkward, clichés get more pronounced, and raging stupidity becomes more apparent. Barring some kind of memory erasure program, I would have settled for someone running me over in the parking lot.

But as far as parents are concerned, there’s remarkably little to be worried about here. The violence is by far the largest concern, and it’s almost entirely incidental to the action. I’m not sure why any of these characters bring guns anymore, since I don’t think anyone was actually injured by one in the film. If you can tolerate some scatological profanity, you can show this to a 13-year-old without too many qualms, unless you’re worried that the movie will negatively impact their cognitive skills.

In case I have somehow failed to make myself clear, don’t see this movie. The runtime is allegedly nearly two and a half hours, but that is an optimistic lie told to you by the production company to lure you into a theatre. The actual runtime is roughly two geological ages. Empires rise, fall, and rise again in the time it takes to get halfway through this staggeringly annoying catastrophe. Frankly, I’d rather have been in one of the many car wrecks on screen than in the theatre. But since I didn’t have that choice, I’m warning you. If you value any of those squishy little grey cells between your ears, stay far, far away.

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Keith hawkes, watch the trailer for f9: the fast saga.

F9: The Fast Saga Rating & Content Info

Why is F9: The Fast Saga rated PG-13? F9: The Fast Saga is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for sequences of violence and action, and language

Violence: Individuals are killed in car wrecks, blown up, beaten to death, and thrown to their (presumed) deaths. Sexual Content: None. Profanity: There are 24 uses of scatological profanity. There is occasional use of mild profanities and terms of deity. Alcohol / Drug Use: Adult characters are briefly shown drinking.

Page last updated October 2, 2021

F9: The Fast Saga Parents' Guide

Dom and Jakob have a complicated relationship at best. What drove them apart? How would their versions of that story differ? What brings them back together? How do you think their relationship will continue to evolve after everything they’ve been through?

Related home video titles:

If you liked this, then good news! There are eight other films in the franchise which are very nearly as bad from which you can choose. Need for Speed is in a similar vein. Almost as bad is the recently-released The Ice Road . If, however, you strongly dislike this dreck, and you’re willing to step up to a more adult film, you could try Baby Driver , Bullitt, or Drive . Teen audiences might prefer Cars , Herbie: Fully Loaded , or Speed Racer . Tron: Legacy also includes elements of racing and danger. If you’re just here for the cars and not the goofy action, you may enjoy Ford v Ferrari .