To call Fast X one of the most ludicrous action films ever made would be a borderline tautology for any instalment in the Fast and Furious franchise. But this one takes the cake. From its inception in 2001, the series has long since devolved from hot-rod street races into a kind of globe-trotting demolition derby, doing for explosive pile-ups on stretches of highway what Twister did for tornadoes.
This time, all bets are off in terms of plausibility. Characters return and arbitrarily switch sides, introduce themselves out of nowhere as the peeved relations of major baddies who died 10 years ago, or try rolling a spherical megaton bomb into the Vatican, just for the hell of it. The series pursues no logic except what’s new, who’s available, and how to pack out the multiplex screens.
In recent instalments, there’s been a danger of bloated earnestness, nicely curbed by the lunacy this time. Anyone who misses the peak shenanigans of the nifty Fast Five (2011), when a bank vault was dragged through the streets of Rio, will be reminded of that heist by a recapping prologue — a good way to show where the bar was set, then start leaping over it left and right. Who knew that Jason Momoa’s character, a drug lord’s deranged scion named Dante Reyes, was present on the scene, and has therefore been plotting revenge for the past decade? No one, until they lined him up last year.
By now, we know exactly what all the series’ stalwarts have to give. When Dwayne Johnson came in, before a head-clonking feud with Vin Diesel soured things, they called him “franchise Viagra”.
Well, they just increased the dose. Momoa is what these films have been missing forever: a flamboyant supervillain and all-round chaos merchant, who likes to perch on the tallest landmarks and dial in carnage. He giggles and whoops, wears his hair in double man buns, and paints the toenails of the dead. Will it be a giant pearl necklace today, or shark’s teeth on a string? Metallic snakeskin or mauve silk? He’s basically Dennis Hopper in Speed meets Liberace. How the Fast series would now avoid grinding to a total halt without him is anyone’s guess.
In between Dante’s attempts to blow stuff up in a range of exotic locations, the film plays spin the bottle, arranging knock-down fights between random characters — Charlize Theron and Michelle Rodriguez in a hi-tech prison, Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson in London’s tattiest internet cafe.
It’s hard to see what Brie Larson in pantsuits (turns out, she’s Kurt Russell’s daughter) adds to the party, or why we need Rita Moreno and Helen Mirren as indomitable matriarchs. But Louis (Now You See Me) Leterrier is not a director to be daunted by maximalism or a stacked ensemble. If there’s an opportunity to smash helicopters together while flinging Diesel’s eight-year-old son back and forth between duelling drivers, Leterrier will grab it. His largesse is supremely trashy, and
The Daily Telegraph
