When I was a senior in high school, I won our school’s prize for the best grade in physics. Now I remember almost nothing about my physics class, but I distinctly remember walking across the stage to receive my award and looking out into the auditorium and seeing my mother in the audience. She had the look of someone suppressing a hearty chuckle, because she knew – as I did – that I received the award because I was merely the best at giving back information on tests and not because I cared a bit or really understood much about science. Physics wasn’t an Advanced Placement class at my school, and while I generally did quite well in other classes in this case my physics award was for mostly performative work.
What does this history have to do with F9: The Fast Saga? The new movie, directed by the returning Justin Lin, carries the weight of the franchise in its title. But let’s not talk about that just yet. Early on in F9, after a prologue and some brief setup, there is an extended chase through remote Mexico that is as ignorant of the laws of physics as I was about five minutes after receiving that award. Could a car that has apparently failed to cross a chasm via a rickety bridge drive straight up in the air? Could Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) really dispatch a larger attacker trying to pull her off a motorcycle from behind? Could Letty and Dom (Vin Diesel) swing across yet another chasm while in a car? The answer to all these questions is of course, “Who cares?” The Fast & Furious franchise, I mean saga, is 20 years in and as comfortable defying gravity as it is celebrating family. The phrase “spatial lunacy” occurred to me. After this first chase scene, I expected the National Anthem to play and the audience to be asked to stand. Or, to put it another way: F9 gives the fans exactly what they want.
The trailer for F9, which now feels like it first came out in another era of movie history, gives away a number of major plot points. Dom has a younger brother named Jacob (John Cena, who is better in comedies), who is attempting to find a Thing so that he can do some other Bad Stuff. Also, a Major Character long thought dead is alive. I’m still not entirely clear on where the Tokyo installment occurs in the timeline of the franchise, I mean saga, but it doesn’t matter now. What the trailer doesn’t disclose is how much time the movie spends on the Toretto family’s Original Wound, that being the death of Dom and Jacob’s father (J.D. Pardo). Mr. Toretto is just as much a delivery system for a certain set of values – family and cars – as Dom is, and his death causes a rift between the brothers that if we understand correctly might have led to the beginning of Dom’s street racing career. The plot feels both simple and baggy at the same time, with the objective of Dom, Letty, and the usual suspects being very clear but with the script taking detours to include flashbacks and characters like Cipher (Charlize Theron) and the terribly named “Mr. Nobody” (Kurt Russell).
F9 isn’t dependent on critics for its fate, and I mean no snark when I say that a good number of the fans really don’t care about plot intricacies. I certainly didn’t. But is worth taking a moment to discuss F9 as another in a fundamentally conservative series of movies. All institutions are conservative in a way, but unlike Star Wars the Fast & Furious movies haven’t become afraid of their own audience. It’s dispiriting to find Dom and Letty in survivalist mode when we meet them though, pulling guns and ordering Dom’s son to hide when an unexpected car pulls up to the farm where they’re living. Soon enough Dom and Letty begin to question if they’re really made for domesticity, and while F9 ends with the obligatory beers & barbeque outside it is telling that the celebration occurs at the home destroyed in a previous installment A rebuild is underway. Vin Diesel (again producing as well as starring) knows what the audience wants, and that is Dom, Letty, and the Family not hiding from anyone. F9 will please anyone who loves this franchise. I mean saga.
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