Stream It Or Skip It: ‘F9: The Fast Saga’ on HBO Max, In Which Vin Diesel and Crew Just Grind Their Gears

FAM’LY. F9: The Fast Saga, ninth film in the intumescent Fast and Furious series, may be more about (assumes clogged-sinus Vin Diesel croak) FAM’LY in the literal sense than ever before. Not only do we get to see Diesel character Dominic Turetto’s dad in flashbacks, but we learn our car-enthusiast-turned-criminal-gang-leader-turned-spy-hero-turned-FAM’LY-man protagonist has a brother! A brother no one ever bothered to mention in the previous 18 hours of movies, and who happens to be not just a very good driver of automobiles, but also an international terrorist – how about that! He’s played by John Cena, which brings up one housekeeping note here: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will not be seen F9, because trying to cram him in next to Cena and Diesel would be way too much NECK for one movie. Now let’s get into it.

F9: THE FAST SAGA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It all goes back to 1989, when Dom watched his father die in a horrific auto-racing crash. Young Dom (Vinnie Bennett) and his brother Jakob (played as a youngster by Finn Cole) were devastated, and Dom’s subsequent vengeful rage put him in prison, leading him on a path to a life of crime and attending parties with terrible generic music, booty-shaking ladies and dangerous, illegal street races. The loss twisted Jakob even more, causing him to go even badder and apparently lift even more weights than his brother, but we’ll get into that in a minute. Now, Dom, his lady Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his little boy are enjoying a chill FAM’LY life on a remote farm without any phones or nuthin’. You know, just hanging out in the barn, father and son, putting a wrench to an old tractor as Letty, one is inclined to assume, sits inside dealing with the psychological trauma of spending a couple movies with amnesia – or maybe she likes to knit.

Their bliss goes kaflooey when old pals Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) suggest they get the F&F Crew back together because one of their other old pals, Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), left a cryptic message about – well, frankly, who cares, because it leads to such a convoluted mess of MacGuffins, far-flung locales and new and returning characters comprising the gears of this plot machinery, sorting it out is a task undertaken by only the most devoted writers of hyperdetailed Wikipedia entries. This is true of all Fast and Furious movies. It’s FAM’LY tradition.

I’ll simplify: Dom gets roped into some of the usual bullshit because his long-estranged brother Jakob (Cena) is working alongside The Fate of the Furious villainess Cipher (Charlize Theron), and they hope to acquire a thingy that’ll allow them to hack into any computer system ever made, ever, ever, forever ever. That shit just can’t happen, so Dom, his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), Letty, Tej, Roman and Ramsey comprise the core Crew members who get to barely survive insane action sequences set in a fake place known as Montequinto, and real places known as London, Edinburgh, Cologne and probably a couple others that flickered by as I glazed over at the screen. The plot ropes in familiar characters played by Helen Mirren, Lucas Black, Shad “Bow Wow” Moss, Shea Whigham, Don Omar and Jason Tobin for supporting bits and extended cameos – and most notably, Sung Kang returns as Han Lue, who must explain why he’s not dead, but this being a Fast and Furious movie, the reasons are entirely reasonably unreasonable.

What ensues is a mellifluous poetry of car smashery, CGI “stunts,” explodingnesses and misc. hyperkinetic movement. Soap opera melodrama is the bread inside a Dagwood sandwich of nutty action sequences, flashbacks, scenes recycled from previous movies so we don’t forget Gal Gadot was in this series for a while and Screamlike self-aware comic relief. Dom speaks in sentences without verbs, magnets exist outside the confines of physics as we know it, car chases go so straight for so long you wonder if the caravan of violence has gone all the way around the world, Pontiac Fieros achieve orbit. In other words, just another hang for the Crew.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: At this point, the Fast and Furiouses are just the shitty versions of the Mission: Impossibles.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s a Herculean feat Tyrese Gibson achieves here, getting the bulk of the fourth-wall-busting self-commentary – you know, why do I keep surviving these situations without a scratch, stuff like that – and not being like tinfoil between our grinding teeth. In fact, he’s flat-out goofy and ebullient at times.

Memorable Dialogue: “As long as we obey the laws of physics, we’ll be fine!” – Tej gets ironic AF up in here

Sex and Skin: None. TBNOTLOPTF: Too Busy Not Obeying The Laws Of Physics To F—.

Our Take: There’s a metaphor at play in all the F&F films: When life gets tough, just gun it and SHIFT. That’s always the answer to Dom and co.’s problems. Trying to drive fast enough over a minefield to avoid getting blown up? Gun it and SHIFT. Gotta destroy the bad guys’ evil satellite with your Fiero-turned-space-shuttle? Gun it and SHIFT. Need to run away from your past misdeeds towards a more hopeful future? Gun it and SHIFT.

You get the point, especially after nine movies of this (10 if you count spinoff Hobbs and Shaw). The Crew, the FAM’LY, has gunned it and shifted through so much rigamarolic nonsense by now, they’re bound to – well, I was going to say “run out of gas,” but that’s just hacky. Part of the F&F M.O. is to outdo the ludicrous action set pieces of the previous movie, but the situations in F9 just feel repetitive. Vin Diesel turns guys’ spines into sawdust, Michelle Rodriguez motorcycles like few people on this earth have ever motorcycled, John Cena drives a car off a cliff and gets snatched midair by a stealth jet, and it’s all yawn-inspiring. (BUT, you may implore, THEY GO INTO SPACE! And I’m here to inform you that it’s a letdown.) Big series finale F&F 10 will reportedly be cut into two movies debuting in 2023 and ’24. Hopefully by the time those five hours bear down on us, Dom will have learned a new trick – like pronouncing the “i” in “family.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. I’ve never had much affinity for this franchise (lotsa headaches and eyerolls here). But as I can mostly objectively say F9 finds the Crew spinning its ti- er, cruising the same str- er, not shifting ge- er, doing the same old stuff.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.