Elsewhere, two of Dom’s most bickersome associates are launched into outer space in a cherry-red Pontiac for no rational reason whatsoever. Vin Diesels Dom Toretto is leading a quiet life off the grid with Letty and his son, little. F9 is the ninth chapter in the Fast & Furious Saga, which has endured for two decades and has earned more than 5 billion around the world. A high-powered magnet smashing cars through buildings is at the core of F9’s strongest action sequence. No matter how fast you are, no one outruns their past. There’s a mysterious physics to these F&F films: not the laws of gravity or real-world kineticism, but that of catastrophic urban damage with zero casualties. But when the VFX are this brazenly weightless, your eyes may already be wandering to the corner of the screen to see how many lives are left. Superfans will cheer the return of another character from beyond the grave.
Helen Mirren, meanwhile, knows exactly how to fit the shape that’s required: her jewel thief’s sole scene is a chase through glitzy nighttime London, swapping banter with Dom, her “favourite American”. But Michelle Rodriguez, as Dom’s longtime squeeze, Letty, still seems on a post- Widows roll, fleshing out her motorbiker with flashes of emotional depth, even when she lands on the hot hood of her man’s speeding car. The film doesn’t know what to do with her. For most of F9, Charlize Theron - whose mystifyingly dull terrorist Cipher returns from the last one - sits in a glass box with air holes in it, like she’s Hannibal Lecter. These movies can be hard on the actors, at least the ones intent on acting. Unfortunately, the adult Jakob is played by an extra-smarmy John Cena, effective in comedies like Trainwreck, but hardly intimidating enough to pull off a proper antagonist to granite-faced Mount Vin. It’s exactly the kind of suspicion that produces decades-long estrangement and, hopefully, a decent villain for a sequel.
But there’s also a younger brother, Jakob, who may have caused the accident. One is the young man who, thousands of pull-ups later, will become Diesel’s growly Dominic Toretto. We begin in flashback: It’s 1989, and a horrifying raceway crash is about to take the life of a stock car driver. (It’s a thrill to be back in front of something big and loud.) The film is a return to principles, and if it goes off the rails into pure silliness - almost irredeemably at one point - there’s at least an ethos to it. Lin’s Fast & Furious 9 feels like a rejuvenation. Director Justin Lin, who perfected the formula with 2011’s deliriously dumb Fast Five, is back in charge after sitting out two laps, during which the production grappled with the untimely death of co-star Paul Walker and some intra-actor bitchiness.