Fast & Furi­ous 9

“I live my life a quar­ter at a time,” Dominic Toret­to told Bri­an O’Connor two decades ago in The Fast and the Furi­ous. ​“Noth­ing else mat­ters, not the mort­gage, not the store, not my team and all that bull­shit. For those ten sec­onds or less… I’m free.” Ten films and $6 bil­lion in box office tak­ings lat­er, there’s seem­ing­ly unlim­it­ed gas in the tank for Vin Diesel’s star vehi­cle, which bien­ni­al­ly appears with a cer­tain­ty only matched by death and taxes.

Not even a pan­dem­ic could keep the Fast Fam­i­ly down; delayed from its orig­i­nal April 2020 launch date, ​‘F9’ sees a whole host of famil­iar faces return to the fold, includ­ing beloved direc­tor Justin Lin, who exit­ed the fran­chise after Fast & Furi­ous 6. Cru­cial­ly, the film also sees the gang bold­ly go where no car mechanics/​street rac­ers have ever gone before: out­er space.

This plot point was teased last year, send­ing the inter­net into a fren­zy along with the rev­e­la­tion John Cena had been cast as Dominic Toretto’s way­ward younger broth­er Jacob – bring­ing anoth­er for­mer WWE star into the fold fol­low­ing Dwayne John­son, Ron­da Rousey and Roman Reigns. Absolute lack of any fam­i­ly resem­blance aside, it’s an inspired choice: while Diesel’s Dominic Toret­to is the cool, calm and col­lect­ed Head of the Fam­i­ly, lit­tle broth­er Jacob is the hot­head­ed prodi­gal son turned inter­na­tion­al super spy.

We kick off with a flash­back to 1989, with the teenage Toret­to broth­ers in the pit at the local speed­way to sup­port their rac­ing father, pro­vid­ing some cru­cial insight into Dom’s trag­ic past which has been hint­ed at through­out the fran­chise. While the pre­vi­ous instal­ment gave us a sur­prise son, F9 pro­vides more in the way of actu­al sto­ry­telling (pos­si­bly as a result of Lin’s involve­ment in the screen­play, which he co-wrote with Daniel Casey) which is a pleas­ant sur­prise giv­en that The Fate of the Furi­ous and spin-off title Hobbs and Shaw were a lit­tle thin on the ground. The weak point con­tin­ues to be Char­l­ize Theron’s vil­lain­ess Cipher, who has a ter­ri­ble new hair­cut and exudes a strange smug­ness for a sup­posed genius con­tin­u­al­ly thwart­ed at every turn.

Fol­low­ing the events of the pre­vi­ous film, Dom and Let­ty (Michelle Rodriguez) are liv­ing in the boon­docks, enjoy­ing a qui­et retire­ment (again) with Dom’s young son Bri­an. When his old crew turns up with news that their asso­ciate Mr. Nobody has gone miss­ing, and Dom’s old adver­sary Cipher is some­how involved, it doesn’t take much con­vinc­ing for the gang to reunite and get down to busi­ness. Cue the car chas­es, fight scenes and gener­ic action set pieces that the fran­chise has become syn­ony­mous with – although this time, there’s fun with magnets.

Dur­ing pro­duc­tion it was teased that F9 would bring back a beloved mem­ber of the crew: Han Lue (Sung Kang) who was pre­vi­ous­ly believed to have been killed in an explo­sion orches­trat­ed by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). The expo­si­tion involved in bring­ing Han back to life is a lit­tle shaky, but it’s worth it for the audi­ence ela­tion when he shows up, along­side some oth­er famil­iar fan favourites and, uhm, Car­di B in a cameo role help­ing Dom out of a tight spot.

The crew’s mis­sion to save the world from Jacob and his camp rich Euro­pean asso­ciate, Otto, takes them to glam­orous loca­tions includ­ing Mon­tecito, Tokyo, and the exte­ri­or of a Las Igua­nas in Edin­burgh. Cru­cial­ly, it also takes reign­ing fran­chise dou­ble act Roman (Tyrese Gib­son) and Tej (Chris ​‘Ludacris’ Bridges) to out­er space in a delight­ful – if not com­plete­ly ridicu­lous – scene involv­ing a rock­et car.

In one notable scene, Roman reflects on the strange­ness of their exploits, and the fact no one has ever been seri­ous­ly injured, pon­der­ing if they might be invin­ci­ble. It’s a know­ing wink at the com­plete lack of inter­est the F&F world has in obey­ing the laws of prob­a­bil­i­ty and physics, but slight enough to avoid being too cloy­ing, which is a fit­ting way to describe the fran­chise, which – against all odds – has main­tained an earnest­ness unmatched by any com­pa­ra­bly sized IP juggernaut.

Nat­u­ral­ly mileage may vary based on the tol­er­ance one has for car chas­es and dia­logue that has no basis in the way human beings actu­al­ly talk to one anoth­er, and at least half an hour could have been shaved off the 145-minute run­time. But the F&F series is Lord of the Rings for the kids who grew up with Hot Wheels; you either get it or your don’t, and if you don’t, nine films in, that’s not like­ly to change.

For those who are will­ing to buck­le up, Fast 9 is a return to form for Diesel and co after a few shaky movies, mix­ing famil­ial ten­sions with elab­o­rate stunt work. It’s brash, loud, and the buzz doesn’t last long after you kill the engine, but this is the sort of film the mul­ti­plex was made for, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t a joy to be back at the movies with escapism like this on offer.