Fast X Parent Guide

When Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) stole the vault from drug lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), they launched Reyes’ son Dante (Jason Momoa) on a quest for revenge. Living by his father’s advice to never let death suffice when suffering is owed, Dante sets out to destroy everything Dom loves most: His family.

After Dante frames Dom’s crew for a major explosion and high-speed car chase through Rome which nearly destroys the Vatican, Dom finds himself at the top of the international most-wanted lists. Separated from his friends and family (and hoping that they can stay out of Dante’s clutches), Dom must learn to work alone. Dante is a step ahead, though, and things are looking grim for anyone who ever helped Dominic Toretto.

The latest entry in this painfully overbaked franchise continues true to form. It still feels like playing Hot Wheels with a five-year-old. “And then they jumped a car between buildings, and then they put a car in space, and now they all work for the CIA, and now there’s a bear in a tutu driving…” Ok, we haven’t had that last one yet, but it’s only a matter of time. This writing team seems to be operating on a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” basis, so I’m sure we’ll have far dumber things to come. Seriously, this movie starts with a villain essentially trying to pachinko a 20-kiloton bomb into the Vatican. When it comes to ridiculousness, there’s clearly no floor.

Vin Diesel has mystified me for years. He has the emotional range, facial expression, and physical presence of the average refrigerator, but he’s somehow managed to leverage a large frame and gravelly voice into years of profitable work. That means that this movie relies on his co-stars to carry all the movie’s attempts at emotional weight. Weirdly, John Cena seems to be the most successful. His over-the-top pro wrestling chops are perfect for this juggernaut of a franchise. Jason Momoa has also opted for an approach with no subtlety whatsoever. He lands somewhere between Tim Curry in Rocky Horror and Heath Ledger as the Joker. If you can look past the teeth marks in the scenery, he might just be the highlight.

That said, being the highlight of a fire in a sewage processing plant isn’t a particularly high bar, and Fast X makes a heap of flaming human waste look like a real treat. It’s approximately a million years too long, and limps through that runtime with the weight of approximately four thousand named characters on its back. This franchise has been around for so long that the list of actors and characters associated is simply unmanageable. I don’t know who anyone but Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez are anymore, but I also cannot even begin to care. If you’re new to the franchise… good luck.

Adults looking for a coherent story will be disappointed but parents hoping for two and a half hours of distraction for their teens could, surprisingly, do worse than Fast X. The violence is all fairly goofy, and there’s not a whole ton of sex or swearing. One character does eat a “fun” muffin, but I couldn’t tell you what was in there. Something mildly hallucinogenic, at any rate. Aside from the violence, the rest of this film is more family suitable than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, and honestly, marginally less irritating. Not that this is an endorsement. I had a crown put in at the dentist’s today, and that was a better experience than sitting through this film. It was much quicker, at any rate, although I’m not a fan of the price tag.