F9: The Fast Saga Parent Guide

Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) is out of the super-spy business, spending his days raising his son Brian (Isaac Holtane, Immanuel Holtane) with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) in almost complete isolation. But when Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) turn up with a mission, he doesn’t have a choice. Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russel) sent them a message: His spy plane has been hijacked and crashed with some top-secret tech aboard. If that tech ends up in the wrong hands it could spell disaster for everyone on Earth. And when Dom’s long-lost brother Jakob (John Cena) turns up to claim it for those very wrong hands, it’s down to Dom and the crew to save the world…again.

I would gladly have paid ten times the small fortune asked for tickets these days to have every memory of this movie wiped from my poor, bruised brain. This is the cinematic equivalent of bashing your head into a brick wall for the sole purpose of giving yourself chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I suspect that may have been part of how this film was written. Every five minutes, it gets worse. Dialogue gets more awkward, clichés get more pronounced, and raging stupidity becomes more apparent. Barring some kind of memory erasure program, I would have settled for someone running me over in the parking lot.

The cast is also evidence of deep lunacy – or, at least, deep pockets. Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron, and Kurt Russell are either here because they need a new agent or because they were offered an earldom to turn up. John Cena comes with the advantage that, as a former WWE star, he can do his own stunts. The downside is that he looks nothing like Vin Diesel, which is especially problematic since no fewer than three characters remark on their resemblance. Not since Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger has a less plausible pair of siblings been shown on screen – unless, of course, they meant to imply that having 0% body fat and more muscles than your average farm horse is a genetic condition.

But as far as parents are concerned, there’s remarkably little to be worried about here. The violence is by far the largest concern, and it’s almost entirely incidental to the action. I’m not sure why any of these characters bring guns anymore, since I don’t think anyone was actually injured by one in the film. If you can tolerate some scatological profanity, you can show this to a 13-year-old without too many qualms, unless you’re worried that the movie will negatively impact their cognitive skills.

In case I have somehow failed to make myself clear, don’t see this movie. The runtime is allegedly nearly two and a half hours, but that is an optimistic lie told to you by the production company to lure you into a theatre. The actual runtime is roughly two geological ages. Empires rise, fall, and rise again in the time it takes to get halfway through this staggeringly annoying catastrophe. Frankly, I’d rather have been in one of the many car wrecks on screen than in the theatre. But since I didn’t have that choice, I’m warning you. If you value any of those squishy little grey cells between your ears, stay far, far away.