F9 (Dir Justin Lin, 2h 22m)

No-one could have predicted, in the opening days of summer 2001 that we'd get here. The Fast and the Furious, borrowing a title and little more from the venerable Roger Corman's 1954 B-Movie, was, undeniably a success on release, but few expected the 19th highest grossing film of 2001, parked between so-so horror flick, The Others and artsy Tom Cruise rom-thriller Vanilla Sky, to turn into a franchise that now sports amusement parks, cartoon spinoffs, and nine sequels (with two more on the way). Yet, here we are, twenty years later. What began with a film based around an undercover cop investigating stolen electronic goods against a world of illegal street racing and car modification has, largely via the escalation of the series in Fast Five (2010), become so much more.

The Fast and Furious world is a labyrinthine, yet astonishingly logical series of escalations from film to film that now takes in cyberterrorists (Charlize Theron's enjoyably nasty Cypher, returning from 2017's The Fate of the Furious), genetically modified super-soldiers (2019's spinoff, Hobbs and Shaw), several criminal underworlds, including English gangsters, Japanese Yakuza, all manner of drug lords, a narrative thread that leaps back and forth in time, and all manner of hi-tech gadgets, secret government projects and colourful cast of ne'er do wells plotting to take over the world. Thus, the latter half of the Fast franchise now resembles the equally revitalised Mission Impossible, albeit with two secret ingredients. Fast cars, and of course, "family". F9, in a way, thus, is the perfect film for cinemas to reopen with, an enjoyably overblown, joyfully self-aware, awe-inspiringly silly, and yet, warm-hearted and remarkably representative slice of action cinema.

We begin with brothers. The Fast franchise is no stranger to sibling and family connections; Dominic Toretto (the ever present Vin Diesel)'s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster) has been part of the series from the start, F6 and F7 introduced a pair of brothers in the form of the villains-turned-anti-heroes, the Shaw brothers (Jason Statham and Luke Evans). Heck, the entire series runs on its own non-nuclear sense of found family, even if some of its members have to be either convinced or brought into it against their will. Thus, we're finally brought face-to-face with a missing part of the puzzle, in the form of Jakob Toretto (John Cena), Dom's estranged brother.

We're introduced to both of them as younger men as part of their father's racing team, their brotherhood breaking apart after their father's death, which Dom holds Jakob accountable for, and following Dom's arrest for attacking the driver who caused it, and a street race where Dom comes out on top, their brotherhood is broken, and the duo separate. In the present, two years (perhaps an overhang from F9 being delayed a solid two years by both Hobbs and Shaw and the pandemic) after the events of Fate of the Furious, Dominic and his wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), now raise Dom's son, but, in the form of the rest of the team, their peace is shattered by the escape of Cipher and her capture of half of a mysterious device, ARES, that threatens the world's computer systems and our heroes set off to track her down in South America.

It's here that the family are attacked by troops under the command of Jakob, and, of course, it's here that the film drops into its familiar drive-and-fight structure. Following a shootout between the family and Jakob's forces, both groups take to a chase through dense jungle, a bone-shaking and wellshot chase that thunders across the landscape, before revealling its duo of aces. First, an astonishing moment where the chase goes airborne, a collapsing bridge adding tension as our heroes race across its collapsing structure. It's just the first of many standout stunts and setpieces that the film is less peppered, more shot through with. But, arriving in a sportscar, comes John Cena's foil to our heroes, proving a capable threat, even before his complex backstory with Dom is fully revealled, escaping via Cipher's jet, with half of the maguff-sorry, ARES, in his possession.

Cena, like Theron, Statham and Evans before him, is the best thing about F9; the series has long realised that, whilst the ever-extending family are excellent characters, in order to really bring out the qualities that have long existed at the heart of the Fast franchise, they need a villain to bring the family together. Certainly, Jakob is far more complex than those who came before-the film gives a sizeable chunk of its downtime, so to speak, to the development of the brothers' bond, with several scenes at the race and its aftermath fleshing out the uber-competitive sense between them. But even in the present, Cena is a threat, a tough, muscular figure that acts as the muscle against Dom, a driving force in both the car and on foot. Here, the film takes us, via a short appearance with Helen Mirren's enjoyably droll matriarch of the Shaw family, to a direct confrontation between brothers. 

And, to be entirely blunt, these moments of fraternal headbutting carry the movie, emotionally and narratively-it is enjoyable to watch Diesel and Cena engage in shouting matches and showdowns, and when the film finally jolts into Edinburgh, where three setpieces converge, it's a joy to watch. Much of this comes down to how Fast, as a franchise shoots action, even in the streets of the Scottish capital; as the action gets going, with the family's tech, Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) stealing the lorry that Jakob's gang, with the help of their European backer, Otto have armed with a magnetic system, so the film's setpieces, including a fistfight between Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), a chase between Ramsay and Jakob's forces, and a chase and series of fights between Dom and Jakob perfectly mesh together, the impact of a car crashing, or one character jumping from vehicle to vehicle felt in the other two setpieces.

Better yet, there's, for how outlandish F9 gets, a scene of crunching groundedness; Cena and Diesel pretty much destroy an entire office in their brawl, and once the chase converges on the streets of Edinburgh, the magnets aboard the truck cause havoc, tossing cars away, or bringing them crashing into the truck, with the eventual capture of Jakob a spectacular tracking shot as a car is-for real-pulled through a building, crashing into the side of the lorry our protagonists now control. It's a visceral crunch of a moment, a barely four second shot that brings a nearly twenty minute action sequence to a close. With it, the film changes course smoothly, the mechanical change from the film's action setpieces to its talky plot moments almost palpable,

No sooner has Han (Sung Kang) come back into the picture-perhaps the only mis-step was spoiling his back-from-the-dead reintroduction that takes in secret espionage, the rescue of, Elle, the daughter of murdered scientists, and an inevitable connection to the film's MacGuffin-than the film is pulling the one-two of explaining what needs to happen with the macguffin, and having Jakob's men break in to capture Elle and ARES, and rescue their boss. This leads to Dom, trapped underwater, once again flash-backing to his childhood, and finally, after nine films, perfectly, superbly, in a single scene, pins down Dom's nigh-memetic devotion to his ever-expanding family in a scene that restores his bond with his brother perfectly, and sets him and his crew on the road to rescue him, take down ARES, and deal with Cipher

And it's here that twenty years, and ten films' worth of logical escalation, ten films of increasingly outlandish and ridiculous setpieces finally come home to roost. Whilst it's, again, been spoiled by the trailers, the joyful ridiculousness of two of the supporting characters blasting into actual space in a car, and the fact that it seems the next logical move, the next obvious step upward in terms of setpieces, is proof that this grounded franchise is at once capable of the sublime and the absurd within minutes of each other. It's small surprise that a crossover between the Fast and the Jurassic World franchise is allegedly on the cards, because an island of dinosaurs is pretty much the last place the series hasn't been. That it doesn't completely overshadow the entire rest of the finale, that itself involves a colossal trailer raised skyward by magnetically weaponized cars, which is then t-boned into the path of a jet Cipher remotely controls to take out our heroes, whilst Jakob reconciles with his brother and makes peace with his family is proof of just how machine-tooled to perfection, how perfectly balanced this entire franchise has become.

There is an energy at the heart of the entire Fast and Furious franchise. Yes, the series has become almost absurd at points, but it is an absurdity, an over-the-top self-awareness that the franchise has long since taken on board, and happily welcomes like a member of Dom's family. Yes, the series is far from what it began as, but the tech-noir-automobile-thriller vibe that the series has, this too is part of the family, a sensibility that the series adapted to five films ago, and now beats with, as well as its petrol-head heart. It may not be the smartest series, it may not be the most consistent, and though it's far more representative than practically all of Hollywood's other mega-franchises, it's still a series of dumb fun action flicks.

F9 is the product of twenty years of cinematic trend-chasing, dead-ends, timeline hopping, and a few dumb luck decisions. It is a $6.2 billion Frankenstein's Monster of concepts, peopled by an astonishing number of characters, and yet, it's held together, even as it crashes from setpiece to setpiece, movie to movie. Because, after all, the most important thing is family, and of all cinema's disparate dynasties, none feel as fitting to lead the charge back to the multiplex, once the virus has abated, than the Toretto clan. For all the petrol-and-nitro madness, for all the increasingly impossibly ridiculous stunts, for the god-damn car in space, there is something disarming, something warm and familiar, about F9, and, whilst this is by no means the best film of 2021, it feels like the one that blockbuster cinema needed to kick back into life with.

Rating: Recommended

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