This series has had an interesting journey leading up to its 9th installment. From its humble beginning of grease monkeys stealing computers to most wanted criminals who rob a bank to government hired super spy mercenaries. Giving us a mixed breed of films that have ranged from subpar to amazing with the most recent entry delivering on high octane action but lacking in other areas .
Fresh off of the presses comes a brand new film that’s good but dull. The writing was lackluster and a bit juvenile compared to the previous films , as I said the action was mixed (for reasons ill explain further down below) and veered into ridiculousness , the performances were still decent (with standouts Cena, Brewster, Thereon & Kang not to mention Bennett and Cole whom play the young Torretto brothers respectively) really stealing the show in the scenes they had. Lin’s direction was okay for what was needed but nothing great.
These movies have always had a sense of honesty to them. There not meant to be Shakespearean masterpieces that’s understandable but even with their crazy fast cars and big adventures there’s always been a sense of grounded realism to keep us coming back for more adventures with Dom and his crew . however unfortunately the work done by the team of this film left a little more to be desired in more ways than one. Leaning a bit more into the absurdity to a huge fault lessoning the emotional impact of many amazing scenes that show why the franchise has shined for so long matched against characters who are invincible and can never be harmed (like Dominic) or almost cartoon like cgi and the action being so far out of depth that its veering into laughable territory . There are many jumps here that they ask you to take in the films and some worked and unfortunately some didn’t . These films had a formula that made it fun but emotional as well alongside with the glorious bombastic blockbuster fun but now its just missing something and with two more films to conclude the series, with Lin helming both and the cast set to return I do hope the team finds what that missing thing is so that they don’t conclude their wonderful series on a slow and dull note. This film is fun but definitely could’ve been better .
