Jordyep

6/10

Spoilers

I kinda want to give it a 10 just because of **that** Helen Mirren scene. But I also want to give it a 1 for making me look at [spoiler]Cardi B[/spoiler] for one minute. On a serious note, it’s mostly good fun. It knows what it is (they quite literally acknowledge that they’re superheroes), the directing is sleek and the action scenes are as creative and batshit as you’d expect. The writing is really predictable, the acting sucks, the music choices are extremely shitty, there are no real stakes, but again, all of this is to be expected at this point. You kinda feel the absence of Statham and The Rock, though Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson make for some entertaining moments as well. The reason why it’s not as good as 5,6 or Hobbs and Shaw simply has to do with the fact that Vin Diesel seems to insist on putting some dark, dramatic undertones in the script. The last film had the scenes had the scenes with Vin Diesel’s kid and Charlize Theron, this one has the whole [spoiler] brother/death of the father beef [/spoiler]. I’d prefer it if they’d leave those scenes out: the actors cannot pull them off, and it messes with the tone. Besides those criticisms, it’s a pretty solid effort. 5.5/10

TKPNPodcast

7/10

How do you review a movie like F9? At this point in the series, if you buy a ticket, you know what you're getting into. The pretense of being a serious crime drama of the early installments is gone. You are just going to get a wild ride. ...and sometimes that is okay. I’m the first to criticize the films in this series. I think the second film might actually be the worst movie ever committed to celluloid. Or videotape. Or streaming. You know what I mean. I think the characters are hard to follow...are they alive or dead? That’s flexible. Never since Star Trek did a cast feel so much like a diversity checklist. I feel like marketing came in and said, “Okay, we need an African American….but can we make them Muslim? That gets us two checkmarks…” That’s not to say the characters aren’t fun. I actually find Tyrese Gibson’s character fun....but notice I don’t know the character’s name? Or Ludacris? Or Vin Diesel...who I know is Dom, but I find that character so tedious, that I’ve been cheering for the Rock to come and knock him off since the fifth installment. Oh, please, please, please, let that happen. But these movies are not about character development. They are about MacGuffins. For the uninitiated, a MacGuffin is a plot device...an object in a movie script (which I heard this movie actually had) that all the characters in the film want. In the 60s these were generally briefcases with files. Pulp Fiction actually brought that back. In the 70s, microfilm was a favorite. Nowadays, you see disks and USB drives fairly often. Even Star Wars had a MacGuffin or did you forget that movie was all about recovering the plans to the Death Star? In this movie, our MacGuffin is some sort of weird globe that was cut in two. It needs to be recovered because if the two halves are reunited with an activating key, you can … well, you can rule the world. Basic Bond villain stuff here. What I get a kick out of is people ripped into James Bond in the late 90s for this kind of nonsense and pointed to the grittiness of movies like Fast and the Furious as the new feel for action films. Now, the two franchises have nearly switched seats (some would say for the detriment of both.) While Bond typically did its stunts practically, the outlandish visual nonsense you are subjected to in these flicks appear to be primarily cartoons. The attachment to physics, particularly this installment’s questionable approach to magnetism, is tenuous at best. But you just have to keep repeating to yourself, “I’m the idiot that bought the ticket. And I’ve done it eight times before. So I’m supporting this crap. It’s my fault.” I actually laughed out loud at the movie’s insane stunts (if you can call output from a PS4 game, which these sometimes resembled, a stunt) more than a couple comedies I’ve seen recently. I should mention, by the way, that the CGI, while it annoys me, is excellent in the film. It looks as realistic as you can expect at the state of the art and these visual artists should really be commended for making the completely unrealistic situations in the film appear feasible. If I ever fall off the top of a building, I’m going to look for a car to fall onto; apparently, they are made of mats and foam because they broke some pretty insane falls in this flick. John Cena should be commended with playing the part of...well, let’s get real. Vin Diesel and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson can’t be in the same room anymore, so they needed a replacement and Cena is freakishly gigantic, too. But he did well with his “heel turn” here playing the heavy. (Yet another trope of action films this movie is slave to. The rich “true villain” hires muscle, or the “heavy,” to perform the heavy lifting.) Charlize Theron is back, too, from whichever installment she was in. She is oddly taking this all very seriously. I’m not sure if she doesn’t know these movies are a joke or she’s intent on playing straight in hopes it comes off all the more jarring by doing so. References to family, of course, dot the script but not to the nauseating extent some previous installments. F9 really feels like a movie put together by a creative team that has looked at the franchise and have specifically picked the things that have worked and punctuating those notes while shaving off a lot of the junk that didn’t work. For those that love the “saga” aspects of our characters’ continuing tales, that stuff is here, though I tend to watch these all as standalone films since the ongoing story is just as ridiculous as everything else. I know there was one reveal, in particular, that was total fan service and I thought “This is just proof I’m not a Millenial. I don’t care at all about this character. Can we move on?” So did I like it? I hate myself for it, but yeah, it was fun. The action is well filmed and there is a ton of it. You can have a lot of fun with these films if you let yourself. So let go of logic and intelligence, sit back with your popcorn, and watch cars act like you used to zoom around your toy cars as a child. Remember, I’m the idiot that bought the ticket. And I’ve done it eight times before. So I’m supporting this crap. It’s my fault.

zmmetz

0/10

I didn't heed everyone's advice and decided I would view this for myself. Yikes!! Definitely not good. Plot holes galore, continuation errors, scene mistakes, factual errors, you name it they exist. Some things just make you scratch your head and say WTF, or smack yourself in the head because you wonder how they could be so stupid when they made this. No, I don't make movies for a living, no I am not a paid critic, I just watch movies for fun and this was not "FUN". If you like action movies with bad acting then this is for you. If you have watched all the other F&F movies and think this is going to be good, then this is for you. If you are looking a way to kill a few hours having numbed yourself then this IS for you. You have been warned.

Per Gunnar Jonsson

0/10

The Fast and Furious franchise has, since quite a few movies back, abandoned all pretense of being anything but silly, unrealistic, action extravaganzas. That means that these movies are not to everyone’s taste (which no movies really are for that matter) but it seems a lot of those people have watched this movie anyway and then pretends to be surprised. Those who give this movie one star ratings have obviously never seen a real one star movie and those asshats that start their review with “I left after xx minutes” are just trolls. If you have not watched the movie, all of it, don’t write a bloody “review”. To me this movie was pretty much what I expected. Perhaps even a bit more silly and over the top than the previous ones, not that this was much of a surprise, but still more or less what I expected. It has a half decent, quite predictable, story that’s just good enough to tie the action sequences together. I do whish stupid Hollywood writers that probably never finished basic school would stop write stories with their favorite “device yyy which can take over all electronics” bullshit in them. Apart from being total scientific nonsense it is really, really overused. Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel. I cannot remember many, if any, movies where I have not liked his character. His team is pretty likable as well although some of their silly shenanigans and ramblings was indeed a bit tiresome from time to time. The core of the movie is of course the action and special effects. Sure, they are incredibly over the top and for the most of the time you have to put your brain in idle when watching them but if you, like me, like special effects this is a movie for you. The silly scene where the bad guys “tank train” flipped over was a bit too much for me as well but on the whole I enjoyed the action. I was not too thrilled with all the flashbacks but then I almost never like flashbacks and there was plenty of them in this movie. I would have liked Chipher to have a bigger role in the movie. She is cool as well as intelligent which is not something that really could be said about Dom’s brother. The main bad guy was just a jerk and not very charismatic. Hollywood really seems to have a problem writing good bad guys lately. Overall, this was some well spent almost two and a half hours (I watched the directors cut). I quite enjoyed this movie.

Mahnoor Khan

0/10

I watched the film, but it didn't appeal to me as much as the prior films. The change in theme and concept was one of the things that bothered me the most in this film. From street racing and minor crimes, the movies evolved into an idea of saving the planet. Okay, that's wonderful; you can save the world; however, how can someone reach space in his car and survive? Seriously? I don't recall this being fast and furious. The plot was similar to earlier films and revolved around Hobbs and Shaw. The story was not exceptional in any way. And, when it comes to action, it was unrealistic and unbelievable. Thousands of cars followed Dom's crew, and thousands of guys with bullets and automatic weapons fired at them, but nothing happened to them. No one was hurt in any way. Are they immortals? I felt the absence of screenwriter Chris Morgan as the structure and storytelling were sloppier to the overall detriment of the film.