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Critics Consensus

As irredeemably silly as it is satisfyingly self-aware, Fast X should rev the engines of longtime fans while leaving many newcomers in neutral. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

If you like your action fast and furious, you'll have fun with Fast X . Read audience reviews

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Watch Fast X with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they've ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who's fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family and destroy everything--and everyone--that Dom loves, forever.

Rating: PG-13 (Intense Sequences of Violence|Action|Language|Some Suggestive Material)

Genre: Action, Adventure

Original Language: English

Director: Louis Leterrier

Producer: Neal H. Moritz , Vin Diesel , Justin Lin , Jeff Kirschenbaum , Samantha Vincent

Writer: Justin Lin , Dan Mazeau

Release Date (Theaters): May 19, 2023 wide

Release Date (Streaming): Jun 9, 2023

Box Office (Gross USA): $573.9M

Runtime: 2h 21m

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Production Co: Universal Studios, Perfect Storm Entertainment, China Film Co., Ltd., Original Film, One Race Films, Roth/Kirschenbaum Films

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital, Dolby Atmos

Aspect Ratio: Digital 2.39:1

View the collection: The Fast and the Furious

Cast & Crew

Dominic Toretto

Michelle Rodriguez

Tyrese Gibson

Jason Momoa

Nathalie Emmanuel

Jordana Brewster

Jason Statham

Alan Ritchson

Daniela Melchior

Scott Eastwood

Little Nobody

Helen Mirren

Charlize Theron

Brie Larson

Rita Moreno

Michael Rooker

Louis Leterrier

Screenwriter

Neal H. Moritz

Jeff Kirschenbaum

Samantha Vincent

Joseph Caracciolo Jr.

Executive Producer

Chris Morgan

Amanda Lewis

Mark Bomback

Stephen F. Windon

Cinematographer

Dylan Highsmith

Film Editing

Kelly Matsumoto

Corbin Mehl

Laura Yanovich

Brian Tyler

Original Music

Production Design

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Has the Fast & Furious franchise earned a victory lap? That’s the key question behind an appraisal of “Fast X,” a film that brazenly plays like a Greatest Hits collection from a hit artist. Not only does it directly link to the massive, franchise-turning “ Fast Five ” in its narrative, but it constantly recalls other films in this series either through direct mention or action beats designed to recall similar moments in movies like “ Fast & Furious 6 ,” “ Furious 7 ,” and “ The Fate of the Furious .” The script by Dan Mazeau and "Fast Five" director Justin Lin (who left the film after creative differences and whose absence is felt in terms of action choreography) is like a snake eating its own tail, often playing like a parody of the franchise more than a new entry that cruises on its own four wheels. Even as it’s spinning through enjoyably goofy action set pieces, most of them enlivened greatly by a fun performance from Jason Momoa , there’s a desperate familiarity to all of “Fast X” that makes it even more like reheated leftovers than it has before. This is reportedly the start of a trilogy that will close the series. Let’s hope they come up with at least one fresh idea in the next two flicks.

Maybe it’s the leaden way in which director Louis Leterrier treats these beloved characters, but the opening scenes of “Fast X” are among the worst in all ten films, a cavalcade of conversations about family, legacy, and other FF tropes. It’s one thing for a character like Dom Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) to preach the importance of family, but it’s another with notes of Charlie Puth playing over gauzy shots of him looking at press stills of Paul Walker . There was an opportunity here to give us “Old Man Dom”—he is 56, after all—but it’s as if Diesel and his team have no idea what that looks like other than to make their tough guy a little wistful. There’s an odd construction to these early scenes that use the oft-parodied trope of Dom saying “family” as a constant whipping post. They diminish what these films were at their best (installments five through seven) by reducing Toretto and his gang to their most obvious qualities. No one expects great character depth at this point, but do we need so many scenes of Dom grunting "family" and looking worried when he sees his son ‘Little B’ ( Leo Abelo Perry )?

“Fast X” improves greatly when Momoa’s Dante Reyes begins his plan to torture Dom and his furious family. Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ), Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ) head off to Rome on a mission, but it’s a trap designed by Reyes, the son of Hernan Reyes, who was killed when Dom and company rolled a safe through Rio in “Fast Five.” Dante says repeatedly that he doesn’t want to kill Dom; he wants him to suffer. That apparently entails an elaborate scheme to frame the gang as terrorists after a bomb explodes in the Italian capital. Following the construction of these films, at least since Vin and The Rock broke up, it’s just a way to divide the crew. Roman, Tej, Ramsey, and Han ( Sung Kang ) flee to London, where they run into Shaw ( Jason Statham ), of course. Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) ends up captured, and only Mr. Nobody’s daughter Tess ( Brie Larson ) and Cipher ( Charlize Theron ) can get her out. And that crowded synopsis doesn’t even include John Cena , Jordana Brewster , Daniela Melchior , Helen Mirren , Rita Moreno , or Alan Ritchson . It’s a crowded street race of a blockbuster.

And yet all of these famous faces are given so little to do. The Roman/Tej banter has never felt more tired; Moreno & Mirren each get one “supporting Dom” scene that sounds like A.I. wrote it; Cena gets trapped with Perry on an awkwardly conceived and executed road trip; only Theron and Rodriguez get to have any real fun in their subplot, fighting it out in one of the film’s best combat scenes. For the most part, “Fast X” is the Dom & Dante Show, and the film is at its most effective when it bounces Diesel & Momoa’s very different screen personas off each other. Diesel seems more stoic than ever while Momoa plays to the back row, going for flamboyant psychotic with every scene. He’s like a giant child in a superhero’s body, sticking out his tongue and gleefully hopping into chaos with a “Here we go!”

“Fast X” opens with a repurposing of one of the most famous scenes in the franchise from “Fast Five,” only inserting a de-aged Momoa into the action that fans remember. It’s almost as if that inciting idea became the creative force behind the entire film. Someone listed the best action scenes on a whiteboard and then asked how the energy of Momoa’s Dante could shift them. Sometimes it works. A drag race scene in Rio captures that more grounded energy from when the series was actually about people driving fast instead of defying physics. There’s a plane dropping a car again and harpoons with wires on the end. Even when the goofy action is working, it’s hard to shake the sense that all of “Fast X” is an echo of something you’ve seen before, and often done better with a director who understands stunt work and action geography better than the mediocre Leterrier. It doesn’t help that “Fast X” often looks poorly rendered in CGI terms, with actors more obviously against green-screen backgrounds than before. It reduces the stakes when we're clearly watching something that’s more visual effects than stunt work.

All of this “rock band encore with new pyrotechnics” approach becomes even less forgivable because of where “Fast X” lands. Or rather doesn’t. Without spoiling, Diesel has revealed that this is the start of a franchise-ending trilogy, and that information probably leaked pre-premiere to soften the blow of a blockbuster with no ending. I’m talking “ Avengers: Infinity War ” level climax here. Characters are left presumed dead, in jeopardy, and still divided. This movie's race down memory lane goes arguably nowhere, forcing fans to wait for satisfaction. It makes “Fast X” into less of a victory lap than a loud, expensive revving of engines that haven’t even crossed the starting line. It just adds to the sense that this isn’t so much about family or fun as it is finances.

In theaters tomorrow, May 18 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Fast X (2023)

Rated PG-13

142 minutes

Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz

Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce

Ludacris as Tej Parker

Jason Momoa as Dante Reyes

Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey

Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto

John Cena as Jakob Toretto

Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw

Sung Kang as Han Lue

Alan Ritchson as Agent Aimes

Daniela Melchior as Isabel

Scott Eastwood as Little Nobody

Helen Mirren as Magdalene 'Queenie' Shaw

Charlize Theron as Cipher

Brie Larson as Tess

Rita Moreno as Abuelita Toretto

Louis Leterrier

Writer (characters)

Gary Scott Thompson

Writer (story by)

Cinematographer.

Stephen F. Windon
Kelly Matsumoto
Dylan Highsmith
Brian Tyler

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‘fast x’ review: jason momoa makes a memorable villain in an action-stuffed franchise installment that’s for fans only.

Vin Diesel headlines a huge cast of new and familiar faces in this 10th film in the hugely successful, car-driven franchise, directed by Louis Leterrier.

By Frank Scheck

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Jason Momoa is Dante in FAST X, directed by Louis Leterrier

The Fast and Furious movies may all be about fast cars, but the franchise has gotten so congested it’s a wonder they’re able to break the speed limit.

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‘Fast X’ Review: Drivers Wanted. Again.

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A man with long hair wearing sunglasses and a snakeskin jacket rides a black motorcycle.

By Wesley Morris

So much has gone over the top in these “Fast and Furious” movies — stunt work and demolition, obviously; but also family trees, racing, race , plots, pates, biceps, upper backs — that it wasn’t until I saw what Jason Momoa was up to in this new installment, “Fast X,” that I realized how much the acting had stayed under the table. He swoops in to play a flamboyant terrorist named Dante Reyes. And it’s pretty clear, from the pitiful quips he’s been given and the light-loafer treatment he’s going for, that the mustache Momoa’s twirling isn’t his. It’s Rip Taylor’s.

For half a century, Taylor ran all over American TV in a hail of confetti that he threw for himself. He didn’t act. He made appearances. That’s how Momoa operates here, showing up wherever the movie needs him (on patio furniture, at the top of the Aldeadávila Dam ) in lavender and snakeskin and billowing everything, horny to blow something up. These movies have been out of good ideas since “Furious 7” eight years ago , mired in government-flavored tug-of-wars over hacking, surveillance and tech. And Momoa’s here to zhuzh things up. So along with Taylor’s mustache, Momoa twirls himself. It’s like watching an overcup oak go trick-or-treating as a Christmas tree.

And yet, even though he destroys the Spanish Steps of Rome with alacrity and purrs lines like, “I know what you’re thinking. And yes: the carpet matches the drapes,” it’s not zhuzh-y enough. Momoa is giving the Joker. But Cesar Romero’s. Of course, he’s the only person here committed to clear and present lunacy, going for post-macho chill, refashioning the quote marks around him into neck pillows.

Five movies and a dozen years ago, Dom (Vin Diesel) and the gang trashed favelas in Rio de Janeiro and killed Dante’s drug-lord father (along with scores of innocent Brazilians, but we’re not going there today). Now, with the series at the bottom of its barrel, Dante wants revenge. This means sending a giant bomb barreling toward the Vatican. He doesn’t quite pull that off, but his wish comes true to make wanted terrorists of Dom and the rest of the gang, creating a rift between them and the feds they covertly work for and spoiling the driving lessons Dom had been giving to his 8-year-old son, Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).

There are about five intersected plot lines, credited to Justin Lin and Dan Mazeau (the director Louis Leterrier replaces Lin as mayhem manager). Dom on the run; Dom’s brother, Jakob (John Cena), babysitting Brian (they’re on the run, too); some of Dom’s crew — Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Han (Sung Kang) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) — all but backpacking through Europe; Dom’s wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), arrested and locked up alongside the crew’s cyberterrorist nemesis, Cipher (Charlize Theron); and the two feds, Aimes (Alan Ritchson) and Tess (Brie Larson), at odds with each other over whether to aid or apprehend the “F&F” gang. And just about every strand stems from Dante’s pique and gets left as a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved until years from now in, what, “Fast X+1”?

The best I can say about all of this is that it didn’t bore me. But this is a series that, by the time its fourth and fifth installments arrived, had merged the original movie’s casually erotic, multiethnic, omni-racial car culture with the “can’t top that” set pieces of Hollywood summer movies. It wasn’t that that fusion was never boring. It had the thrill of newness. How many times have I laughed, in awe, at what this series could do with all kinds of vehicles and the people behind them. It insisted that a universe of nonwhite folks could meet the priorities of blockbuster filmmaking and still rake up money around the globe. And it was exciting to see who they could enfold into that agenda (Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell).

We’re talking about 22 years and nine sequels, though. Stacking the rotation with two former professional wrestlers, four Oscar winners (Rita Moreno gets jammed in here as Dom’s grandmother) plus Aquaman no longer feels like radical popular-culture inclusion. It feels both defensive and greedy: Can the Avengers top that ? From an industrial standpoint, it does expose how much less gonzo our movies are now. What other franchise would’ve had the nerve to imagine Statham as Mirren’s son? To put Diesel in Moreno’s arms, Larson’s good graces and Theron’s cross hairs?

There’s a charitable, cash-free reason nobody wants these things to end. Despite Paul Walker’s having been dead for a decade, in these movies, his character, Brian O’Conner, is still alive, still married to Dom’s sister, still a dad, still living on a beach somewhere. The opening minutes of “Fast X” reimagine the death of Dante’s daddy in “Fast 5” and therefore grant the film an excuse to reanimate Walker. It just strains credulity that Brian would be sitting idle now while his homies face extinction. But that’s an implication of what these movies are asking us to believe, that his wife, Mia (Jordana Brewster), is more down for the defense of their family than he is. So letting this series go means letting Walker go, too. But that sentimentality leaves these movies with nowhere to go but up its own annals. (Well, there is Antarctica, the funniest of the datelines here.)

Instead, we get the wrong kind of chaos. You can see it in the incoherence of the driving — and there’s not enough of that, either. Which means wasting the series’s lead actor and flame-keeper. These movies used to know what they had in Vin Diesel. Put him behind the wheel of anything, and he’s a star. The cameras in “Fast X” are too busy to truly take in all the furrowing, the glints, the scowls. He’s not much of a husband, lover, father or mastermind in these movies, but give his foot a gas pedal and suddenly the man can act. His best moments in “Fast X” involve that stuff at the Vatican. He seems to mean it. Dom’s enormous crucifix isn’t an accessory. It’s a promise. But later, when he’s pulling two charred helicopter husks behind him, Diesel’s lack of concern concerned me. The thrill is gone.

It’s not there in the sequence in which that ball-bomb eats a chunk of Rome or any of the many, many shootouts and fistfights. Not even in the brawl Rodriguez and Theron endure that should have killed both of their characters. Visually, it’s as messy as a lot of the sequences in “Fast X.” It’s hard to care about a fight you can’t follow or be bothered to suspend disbelief for. That’s the true death knell for this series: rationalism, nit-picking, disillusionment. ( Why can’t Brian come out and play? )

The series doesn’t need Momoa’s vamping. The camp was always coming from inside the garage, the way these movies operated in defiance of physics, chronology, narrative logic and DNA. Their subject was criminals conflicted about going legit. Now they’re practically a government agency, out protecting the planet — and they’re so far through the moral looking glass that everybody looks too comfortable. There’s a reason the movies’ insistence on family starts to feel laughable. It makes us feel like we’re at Olive Garden. Their dumbness made them important. Now, self-importance has made them dumb. Characters are now explaining these movies to each other — and where great, big, bronzed Aimes is concerned, man splaining them. They’re saying stuff like, “It’s like a cult with cars,” “The fallout will be existential” and “This family has gotten their hands dirty to keep ours clean.”

These movies used to know what about them was ridiculous. They’d give that to us until our hearts broke the speed limit. But I’ve already seen Diesel drive at a 90-degree angle before. The old bravado currently reeks of formula. The nerve is shot. There was a time when this series would have had Dante send a pair of balls hurtling toward the Vatican.

Fast X Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hour 21 minutes. In theaters.

Wesley Morris is a critic at large and the co-host, with Jenna Wortham, of the culture podcast “Still Processing.” He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for criticism, including in 2021 for a set of essays that explored the intersection of race and pop culture. More about Wesley Morris

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Fast X Review

Flirtin’ with disaster..

Fast X opens in theaters on May 19, 2023

Universal doesn’t have X-wings, they have cars that sometimes fly. They don’t have superheroes, they have street racers from Los Angeles who steal VCRs and nuclear subs. With so many filmmakers taking the po-faced, gritty approach to keeping old favorite characters and series relevant in recent years, the Fast and Furious franchise’s open and growing embrace of nonsensical mayhem has been a delight. 2021’s F9 managed to pull off multiple outrageous action scenes based on the magic of magnets. It sent Tyrese and Ludacris to space in a Pontiac. It told us John Cena was Vin Diesel’s brother with a straight face, and we believed it . Or at least, those of us who were willing to suspend enough of our disbelief to go along for the wild ride. But it turns out there’s only so much mileage you can get out of that kind of absurdity without touching grass. The roaring joy of F9 gives way to the cacophonous Fast X, a sprawling and overstuffed opening salvo of a planned multi-part finale which stuffs a potato in the series’ tailpipe. It’s redeemed almost single-handedly by a deeply weird and very entertaining villain performance from Jason Momoa.

It was all the way back in 2011 that Fast Five saw Hobbs chasing Brian and Dom while they were towing drug lord Hernan Reyes' safe through Rio. It was a watershed moment of cartoon logic worming its way into a formerly self-serious series, which paired best with a can of Axe body spray and a copy of Need for Speed Underground 2 on the PS2. And you know what? The movies that followed were mostly the better for it. There’s vulnerability and risk in significantly shifting the tone of a franchise midstream, and few could’ve imagined watching the 2001 original that not only would the Fast movies take that risk at all, but be so successful in transitioning it to something uniquely bombastic.

As this series is wont to do, Fast X sloppily reveals that Hernan’s son Dante (Jason Momoa) was actually present during that whole chase scene and, after seeing his family’s ill-gotten fortune destroyed and his father killed, has re-emerged to wage war on Dom (Vin Diesel) - the ringleader of the world’s premier group of car thieves/international spies - promising no death while suffering is owed. His revenge motivation may be clear, and Fast X hammers his Anti-Dom foil status home at every turn, but the ways in which Dante brings that vengeance to bear on the Fast Family are as erratic as Dante himself. It’s only through the technology and mercenary forces that he is somehow able to amass that he’s able to do much of anything. He wants to make Dom suffer by hurting his family, but routinely ignores opportunities to twist that knife in ways that read as less patiently sadistic and more just… ineffective.

The looseness of the character demanded an actor ready to exploit that in their performance, and Jason Momoa showed up to set hungry. Dante’s effectiveness as an antagonist aside, the boundless chaos energy Momoa sustains throughout the entirety of Fast X is the one consistently enjoyable element. There’s no other way to say it: Dante’s a real freak, and Momoa flies that flag with gusto. It feels like he’s marathoned all these movies and parodies Dom’s machismo and predictable logic at every turn, both to Dom’s face and he’s completely alone. It’s the private moments of goatee-twirling that set Dante apart from other villains in the series to date, and Momoa deserves a huge amount of credit for keeping Fast X from sinking under its own weight.

What's the best Fast movie so far?

Dom Torretto, by comparison, feels like he’s just drifting from one rumination on the meaning of family to another, and Vin Diesel feels checked out any time Momoa isn’t actively forcing him to push Dom in a different direction, as opposed to regurgitating what we’ve heard before.

None of Fast X’s clumsily orchestrated car Rube Goldbergs manage much of an identity of their own either, and that’s a shattering disappointment for a series that has historically found new and interesting ways to move vehicles through time and space and explosions. Multiple action scenes feel like rehashes of previous movies - remember when Hobbs and Shaw played tug of war with a helicopter? Well, now Dom’s gonna do the same thing with two helicopters ! Does it escalate things? Yes. Is it stunningly original? It is not.

It’s not a great bellwether for the symphonies of motorized mayhem that the hand-to-hand fights (especially one featuring Charlize Theron’s Cipher) feel like welcome shakeups. Dante’s weird sacrilegious scheme to roll a bomb through Rome to the Vatican represents the most satisfying action sequence – thanks again largely to Momoa’s unpredictability, and yet there’s a whole lot of movie left after that which can’t escalate the thrills any further. Director Louis Leterrier doesn’t succeed much at celebrating either the maximalism or the melodrama of the series, and it leaves Fast X feeling rather confused in both arenas.

The Fast and Furious Movies in (Chronological) Order

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Dante’s attack on Rome forces the Family to initiate Ghost Protocol (or whatever the Fast equivalent of that is) and split up, setting the Agency on their tail and fragmenting the plot into way more perspectives on the action than the story has material for. Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges”), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) continue their bickering support act, with Han (Sung Kang) tagging along because he had nothing else going on that day. Fast X grinds to a halt whenever it has to shift focus back to what feels more and more like a budding Peacock series in the wings. We’re only ever checking in on that group so Ramsey can spout some technobabble exposition while Roman and Tej slapfight and argue over hurt feelings caused by bobbleheads, or so that we have a reason to move the action to a city where another extraneous member of the ensemble can have their next mission set into motion.

John Cena’s Jakob is on babysitting duty for most of Fast X, and even though his corner of the story feels as inessential as the other supporters’, Cena’s ace comedic chops and chemistry with Little Brian actor Leo Abelo Perry are a welcome change from the forced schtick of Roman’s crew. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) gets sidelined, stranded in what is at once a prison of her character’s function being reduced to Dom worship and, you know, an actual prison. No one has anything meaningful of their own going on, and so time spent away from either Dom or Dante, or without solidly engaging action, gets harder and harder to justify.

The Dumbest Moments From the Fast & Furious Movies

These are the most ridiculous stunts, silliest plot threads, and inexplicable character choices from all the Fast & Furious movies so far. And they're not even in outer space yet! Massive spoilers for all Fast & Furious movies follow...

There are certainly flashes of the camaraderie this group of performers share but, with the subplots feeling totally disconnected from each other, the recurring check-ins don’t really add anything of value. Since we already know that Fast X serves as the first of a two-part franchise finale (or three-part finale, if you believe Vin Diesel…) its efforts to marshal characters both old and new into position for that final lap feel inorganic – shoehorned in, even, for a series which has always celebrated return appearances and new seats at the proverbial dinner table. And like so many “Part One”s before it, Fast X forgoes – or, forgets – any kind of resolution for its own story. The time it starts rapidly raising questions to be answered next time in the last few minutes only feels more egregious. Couldn’t we have heard what Rita Morena thought of all this mindless violence?

Fast X is the beginning of the end, but the race to the end of that beginning is a bumpy ride. Jason Momoa’s bonkers performance as Dante Reyes deserves instant canonization on the Mt. Rushmore of Fast & Furious villains, but that feels like the one differentiating element of this movie. There’s not enough barbeque at the table to go around Dom Toretto’s ever-growing family, and director Louis Leterrier isn’t able to walk the tightrope between excess and self-awareness that the modern Fast films demand. There’s still time for the Fast franchise to cross the finish line in first, but this flat tire of a “part one” will make the last lap a nailbiter.

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‘Fast X’ Review: Massive ‘Fast & Furious’ Endgame Explodes Into View with an Outrageous New Villain

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Relying on homages to past stunts (like Diesel’s Dom Toretto driving out of a moving plane) and surprise appearances by long lost characters, the movie lays the groundwork for a possibly three-part finale (as Diesel has indicated) . Whether it has any new tricks up its sleeve still remains to be seen, though it’s unclear if that matters to its many diehard fans. Related Stories ‘The Holdovers,’ ‘Succession,’ and ‘The Bear’ Win Top Prizes at WGA Awards (Complete Winners List) ‘Disappear Completely’ Review: Netflix’s Vicious Spanish-Language Horror Recalls ‘Drag Me to Hell’

Following the mantra of go ginormous or go home, “Fast X” rallies its many disparate characters against a shared enemy. (Never mind that some of the more forgettable ones would have been better left alone.) Operating on the adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” this installment brings previous rivals together to stop a demonic psychopath who will stop at nothing to teach Dom the painful lesson that he can’t save everyone.

It must be gospel in Hollywood that every leading man reveres and studies Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning Joker performance, proven out by Jason Momoa’s outrageously flamboyant take on the aggrieved villain Dante. Often laughing maniacally at his own evil genius, Dante drives a purple car, and sports silk pants and purple nails, because: “It tones down the masculinity, which we all need these days.” This winking nod at shifting norms might be less complicated to enjoy if it wasn’t said while giving pedicures to a group of corpses. Instead, Universal is engaging in the oldest trick in the book, using flamboyance (read: queerness) to signal psychopathic supervillain. Pitted against the raging paternalism of Dom Toretto’s singular guiding purpose to protect his family at all costs, the moral edict is crystal clear.

Now 12 years old and able to sustain his own B-plot, Brian gets his own mini road movie while on the lam with Uncle Jakob (John Cena). Introduced as the tepid villain of “F9,” Dom’s long lost brother fits much more easily into the family as the good guy he was always meant to be. Tasked with keeping Brian safe, he and the kid set out on a charming little side adventure that offers a sweet diversion from the flashier antics. Cue adorable hijinks surrounding the nostalgic magic of mix tapes and lessons in swearing.

The same can’t be said for the other members of the extended family, though they certainly start things off with a bang. Running point on an operation in his namesake city Rome (a confusing choice), Roman (Tyrese Gibson) heads up the dream team of longtime favorites Tej (Ludacris), Han (Sun Kang), and recently introduced hacktivist Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). But the for-hire job ends up being a trap set by Dante in order to lure Dom to come to their rescue. When a truck of what they think is computer chips ends up carrying a massive bomb, suddenly a simple heist turns into a world-saving mission.

With their old CIA contact Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) mysteriously in the wind, Dom and the family find themselves the target of unsympathetic new boss Aimes (Alan Ritchson). Luckily, Dom is saved by a rogue agent determined to fulfill her father’s legacy, a cheerful but competent Brie Larson as his new CIA ally Tess. Defying her shifty new meathead of a superior Aimes, Tess tracks down Letty in a remote black-ops site, reuniting her with her old pal Cipher for an epic escape and survival plan.

With Dante’s fixation on proving to Dom that family isn’t forever, motivated by his back story, it’s only natural that the climactic battle end in an epic chase for Brian’s survival. Dom has to make some sacrifices along the way, but not before yet again landing a race car from a moving plane, and driving full speed down the side of a Hoover-sized dam. The action delivers, but the film ‘s third act suffers from an excess of set-ups, cameos, and minor deaths played up as major losses. After all, they have (at least) two more to go.

Universal Pictures will release “Fast X” in theaters on Friday, May 19.

Movie Review: A delicious Jason Momoa saves ‘Fast X’ from furiously speeding off into numbness

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Vin Diesel in a scene from “Fast X.” (Peter Mountain/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Vin Diesel, left, and Daniela Melchior in a scene from “Fast X.” (Peter Mountain/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Vin Diesel in a scene from “Fast X.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows a scene from “Fast X.” (Giulia Parmigiani/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows, clockwise from left, Michelle Rodriguez, Sung Kang, Nathalie Emmanuel, Vin Diesel, Leo Abelo Perry, Rita Morena, Jordana Brewster, Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson in a scene from “Fast X.” (Peter Mountain/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Jason Momoa in a scene from “Fast X.” (Giulia Parmigiani/Universal Pictures via AP)

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Fans and critics may disagree over when exactly the “Fast & Furious” franchise jumped the shark, but there is only one correct answer: When the Pontiac Fiero went into space.

Weightless and violating every physical law, the floating car — tasked with bumping a satellite in the ninth installment — was the very symbol of how bloated and crazed the once-plucky series had become. There really was no way down after that.

And yet we have come to 10, part of a planned series of films finally saying goodbye. “Fast X” is, thankfully, shackled to Earth’s gravity — sometimes tenuously, it must be said — but it has become almost camp, as if it breathed in too much of its own fumes.

“Fast X” reaches into the fifth movie — 2011’s “Fast Five” — for the seeds to tell a new story. In a memorable moment five movies ago, Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto wrecked a bad guy and his team on a bridge in Rio de Janeiro. Little did we know then, but that bad guy had a son who survived and now, years later, vows vengeance. That’s it. That’s the plot.

That said, “Fast X” is monstrously silly and stupidly entertaining — just Wile E. Coyote stuff, ridiculous stunts employing insane G-forces and everything seemingly on fire. There are elements of “Mission: Impossible,” 007 and “John Wick,” as if all the action franchises were somehow merging. But here’s a warning: It careens to an end without a payoff, a more dangerous stunt than any in the movies themselves.

This image released by A24 shows Kirsten Dunst in a scene from "Civil War." (Murray Close/A24 via AP)

The film would not be near enough as fun without Jason Momoa, who plays the bad guy’s son as a full-on flamboyant psycho, licking a knife clean after killing someone with it and painting the toenails of a dead victim as he displays the corpse in a demented garden party. “Never accept death when suffering is owed,” he says.

He is half Joaquin Phoenix from “The Joker” and half Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Momoa has a penchant for planning explosions and then standing on a high spot and throwing his arms wide like Christ the Redeemer as the blast wave hits. The film sags as soon as he’s not in it.

Momoa is part of the franchise’s familiar tactic of stacking ever more stars with not enough to do — this time we also welcome Brie Larson, Alan Ritchson, Daniela Melchior and Rita Moreno. There’s even a Pete Davidson cameo.

That’s on top of regulars Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Jordana Brewster, John Cena, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren, whose attempt once again at a working-class accent is comical. This is a clown car of talent. The poster for the film includes 14 characters, like an Avengers movie.

At the center is the always-sleeveless Diesel, who keeps getting exposed as a truly terrible actor, one who evidently only attended the Brooding 101 seminar in drama school. The filmmakers usually just prop him up in front of a wall of family photos and he stares at them intently. “I only care about protecting the people that I love,” he will growl.

Family — as fans of the franchise know well — is always central, or rather, a gothic zero-sum notion of blood’s bond explained with soap opera dialogue. Toretto must protect family no matter the cost (but apparently OK with leaving his 8-year-old son in someone else’s care as he drag races in Rio). “You know what your problem is?” teases Momoa. “Family. You can’t save them all.”

New director Louis Leterrier — from a screenplay by veteran Justin Lin and newcomers Zach Dean and Dan Mazeau — take us from Los Angeles to Antarctica, threatening much of Rome with a 20 kiloton bomb along the way and ending the movie at the side of a dam in Portugal in a cliffhanger. Stick around for the credits and even more mega-stars are promised for the next installment.

What you get this time are two brutal hand-to-hand fights, a car smashing two helicopters and rush hour traffic, car bombs, remote-controlled cars (big and small), vehicles that leap into the sky like salmon and a plane that drops a souped-up racer from its belly onto the highway.

Taking material from “Fast Five” means the delicate task of returning to Paul Walker, the franchise veteran who died in 2013. Old footage of Walker does appear in “Fast X” as the movie recreates events on that Rio bridge. It is handled respectfully and coolly. In a nice touch, Walker’s daughter, Meadow, has a cameo as a flight attendant.

With a foot in the past, one in the future and one on the gas, “Fast X” is pure popcorn lunacy. Was that too many feet? Oh, excuse us, you wanted logic?

“Fast X,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for intense sequences of violence and action, language and some suggestive material. Running time: 134 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Online: https://www.fastxmovie.com

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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‘Fast X’ review: Jason Momoa’s big bad revs up the franchise engine

Clever cameos and a delicious new villain mean this is the best F&F movie for years

W here do you take a series when you’re 10 films in and you’ve already driven a car into space? The mad beauty of the Fast franchise is that it can pretty much go anywhere, even when it’s been everywhere. If we can believe it though, the supercar saga is finally running out of road, with this the first of a mammoth two-part finale.

It only takes a few minutes for the action to rev up. Within a few scenes we’re watching a plot to blow up The Pope with a giant comedy bomb that rolls through Rome like a boulder. Throw in a gold Lamborghini that’s so shiny it blinds people; a pop-up glider that’s powered by whiskey miniatures; and a scene where Pete Davidson feeds Sung Kang an acid-laced muffin, and we’re firmly back where we left off last time when everyone flew back from the moon in time for a BBQ.

You can still play a dangerous drinking game by taking a shot every time Vin Diesel says “it’s all about family” (It’s not, of course, it’s all about cars), but the plot this time really does manage to involve everyone’s brother, mother and long-lost uncle.

Opening with a flashback to the best bit of the best film in the franchise so far, we watch the Rio heist from 2011’s Fast Five from a different angle – this time seeing that dastardly baddie Hernan Reyes also had a dastardly son called Dante (Jason Momoa). Spending 10 years plotting vengeance on the Fast family for stealing his dad’s money, Dante now buys an army of tanks, sports cars and military jets to try and blow everyone up in beautiful locations.

The last film topped up the cast list with John Cena, Puerto Rican rapper Ozuna and Cardi B . This time we also get Momoa, Rita Moreno, Daniela Melchior and Brie Larson. And that’s on top of the massive roster of big names that are already part of the family – including some that have technically died already (who’s counting?). The credits alone go some way to explain how this is one of the most expensive films ever made, but throw in a few hundred exploding cars and $340million seems like a steal.

Director Louis Leterrier ( The Transporter , Now You See Me ) replaces Justin Lin behind the wheel without letting up on the pedal, but the real draw here is Momoa. Looking like he’s having more fun than anyone ever has at their job, Momoa’s evil peacock is the best thing in the series so far – singing and dancing his way through all the cartoon mayhem in a pair of pink hair ribbons. The franchise has always been deeply homoerotic, but it’s never been this openly, joyfully camp – adding the one extra sundae topping that no one even knew they were missing.

When Momoa isn’t on screen and stuff isn’t exploding, the daft dialogue almost sinks the film into parody. Sure, no one’s ever watched a Fast film for the talking, but so much time spent between set-pieces means we only really get half of a film a here – the big final cliffhanger stopping just as it’s getting going.

One last-minute cameo makes no sense, and is hilarious, followed by a mid-credit cameo that makes plenty of sense and is even funnier – lining up a 2025 encore to sink all encores. Has Fast 11 got anywhere left to go? Of course not. But that’s not going to stop it flooring it all the way there anyway.

Director: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Vin Diesel, Jason Momoa, Charlize Theron
Release date: May 19 (in cinemas)
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In Theaters

May 19, 2023
Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto; Tyrese Gibson as Roman; Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz; Ludacris as Tej; Sung Kang as Han; Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey; Jason Momoa as Dante; John Cena as Jakob; Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto; Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw; Rita Moreno as Abuela Toretto; Helen Mirren as Queenie; Brie Larson as Tess; Charlize Theron as Cipher; Alan Ritchson as Aimes; Leo Abelo Perry as Little Brian; Luis Da Silva Jr. as Diogo; Scott Eastwood as Little Nobody; Daniela Melchior as Isabel

Home Release Date

June 9, 2023
Louis Leterrier

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Dominic Toretto is one lucky guy.

He’s driven cars out of flying airplanes. He’s driven cars through skyscrapers. (Not through the lobbies of skyscrapers. We’re talking about vaulting through the air 50 stories up.) He’s driven cars that pull 10-ton safes straight out of walls, then has used said safes as square bowling balls to knock other cars off the road.

Perhaps, given all the explosions and engine noises he’s dealt with the last 22 years, Dom’s luckiest break (brake?) of all is that his eardrums are still intact.

But the mechanic/street racer/carjacker/international spy’s luck-tank may be running out of gas. Dom has made some enemies over time. And after a career built on breaking both the laws of man and physics, someone wants to break him —one piece at a time.

That man is Dante Reyes, son of the late drug kingpin Hernan Reyes. Dante watched as Dom and his friend, Brian O’Conner, swiped said 10-ton safe from his pops, after which Dom used it to slingshot his own car into Hernan’s vehicle. (Who knew that safes could be so mobile and useful?) And while Dante was conspicuously absent from the event as chronicled in Fast 5 , don’t tell Dante he wasn’t there. Because he’ll take offense and kill your whole family.

That’s kind of Dante’s style. If someone wrongs him? Threaten that someone’s family. If Dante wants someone to work for him? Why, he’ll threaten his family. If someone kills Dante’s father? Ooooh, yeah, that’s a threatenin’.

Dante is rich enough—and insane enough—to make good on those threats against Dom’s family. And if you’re familiar with the Fast & Furious movies at all, you know Dom’s all about family.

He’s married these days, to fellow street racer Letty Ortiz. He’s got a kid, too. Brian—Little B., they call him—is about 10 years old and just now learning how to drift. And Dom’s siblings, Jakob and Mia are as close as close can be.

But Dom considers his crew family, too. Roman, Tej, Han, Ramsey … they’re as connected as a crankshaft and timing chain, as tight with each other as pistons and O-rings. When you burn as much rubber together as these folks do, you burn a little of their love into your soul, too.

Yep, Dom’s got a big family. And Dante hopes to destroy that family, bit by bit. It’s not enough for Dom to die. No, his father taught Dante that their enemies must suffer . So while Dom can make cars fly and safes swing and the laws of gravity itself bend to his whim, Dante believes that he’s more than a match for Mr. Toretto.

Dom’s luck might be on its last fumes.

Positive Elements

As you’d expect, you hear a lot about family in Fast X , and that familial angle leans particularly hard in the direction of Dom and his son, Little B.

Dom does his best to pass on everything he knows to his child. He brags that Little B. will be better than him one day: “Each generation better than the last,” he says. “That’s fatherhood.”

And he takes fatherhood very seriously. Dom prides himself on always keeping his promises to his son—and he promises (somewhat redundantly?) that he’ll never break one. When someone asks him why he’s still driving and working on cars with carburetors in them instead of faster, “better” fuel-injected vehicles, Dom explains that the carburetors teach Little B to listen—something that, in Dom’s estimation, people do far too little of. And, of course, he’ll risk his life habitually to save the life of his boy.

“I only want to protect the people I love,” Dom says. That covers plenty of people we meet here, and the street runs both ways. Plenty of folks risk their lives (and sometimes give them) to save their compatriots. Others push against unfair directives aimed at Dom’s team, both out of loyalty and a sense of fair play. And despite the outlandish levels of collateral damage we see here—mainly to cars and buildings—Dom and his pals care about the innocents imperiled by the events of this movie, and they often do everything they can to minimize unnecessary casualties. (At other times, such collateral damage feels like a bit of an afterthought, but hey. This is a Fast & Furious movie.)

Spiritual Elements

Dom and others make several references to faith during the film, often connecting that faith to the crucifix that Dom wears around his neck. These sincere-but-superficial references to faith go little farther, but it clearly implies that Dom is not just a Christian, but one who relies on God in any number of impossible situations. “Nothing is impossible,” he reminds his son. “You just have to have faith.”

We also hear other, less spiritual references to faith and religion.

Dante’s name may be designed to point viewers to the Italian author Dante. He’s famous for his Divine Comedy , of course, which takes readers on a tour of hell, purgatory and heaven—with the first book, Inferno , being the best known. That’s where the concept of the nine circles of hell comes from, and you could argue that the movie’s makers are suggesting that Dante is dragging Dom through his own nine circles.

Dante also wryly suggests that Dom is some sort of saint—reminding him that to be a saint, one must either perform miracles or die a martyr. Dante also tries to blow up the Vatican, though he blames the choice on his unwilling henchmen. (“OK, I’ll do it,” Dante says, feigning reluctance. “But you guys are going to hell.”) When Dom saves the Vatican from the bomb, Dante mentions his heroism later. “Who does that?” he says, referencing saving the holy city. “The pope? God?”

Cipher, another ongoing villainess in the Fast & Furious franchise, reluctantly warns Dom about Dante after she has a run-in with the latter. “I met the devil tonight,” she tells Dom. “Honestly, I always thought it was me, so it was kind of disappointing.”

We see churches (some of which have been damaged by explosions) and crucifixes. A bit of technology is referred to as “God’s eye.” There’s a suggestion that someone may be helping bring people together beyond the grave.

Sexual Content

A scene in Rio de Janeiro features plenty of dancing women in tight, skimpy outfits. The camera seems to focus especially on barely clad posteriors and the like.

Dom and Letty spend some time on their bed, engaging in gently suggestive talk. (Dom asks if Little B.’s in bed and marvels that Letty gets more beautiful with each day.) He squeezes her thigh, but the scene goes no farther. Other women can wear somewhat revealing garb. Ramsay, a female hacker for Dom’s team, renews an acquaintance with an old flame.

While Dante’s sexual preferences aren’t dealt with here, actor Jason Momoa (famous for his role as Aquaman ) intentionally plays with the character’s sexuality. “He’s very sadistic and androgynous, and he’s a bit of a peacock,” he told Variety . “He’s got a lot of issues, this guy.”

Violent Content

Holy Toledo, we could fill up the entire internet with this section.

It’s not that the violence here is gory or even particularly bloody. But if you’ve seen a Fast & Furious film, you can take that and goose it with a little nitrous oxide for this installment. The plot may feature more explosions than words. As such, we’ll not detail every conflagration here, but we will give you a little overview of what to expect.

The opening set piece features a giant bomb literally rolling through the streets of Rome. It smashes cars (moving and not), crashes through a bus, destroys countless bits of property and catches fire. Dom helpfully crashes his own car into restaurant awnings, thus protecting diners from the blaze. The bomb goes off, but not as had been planned: Had it done what Dante wanted it to do, it would’ve leveled Rome’s famous seven hills down to “two-and-a-half.” Other, smaller explosives send various vehicles flying and exploding. But despite the incredible destruction the bomb leaves in its wake (not to mention that of the folks chasing it), we learn later that, improbably, no one died.

That is what this movie would like us to believe: Even though dozens—perhaps hundreds—of vehicles are smashed, mashed and completely obliterated, the movie’s junkyards are far busier than its hospitals.

People do die, however. Some are killed in fiery explosions. Others are shot or stabbed or sliced, and at least one appears to suffer a broken neck. Another is impaled by a bit of elevator machinery.

We see the corpses of two such victims, their faces disfigured by what looks like packing tape as someone paints their toenails. Both have bulging eyes, and a fly lands grotesquely on one eyeball.

Characters fight frenetically in several scenes—leaving each other bloody and bruised. Many people get shot; some survive, others do not. One woman stabs another in the shoulder. People fall down from a couple of stories up. Two characters nearly drown. Someone loses a tooth. Planes explode. Cars explode. Buildings explode. Restraint explodes.

Crude or Profane Language

When Little B. nearly says the s-word during one scene, his Uncle Jakob tells him that that word is only allowed for “song lyrics and stubbed toes.”

Later he amends that statement to include “cannon cars,” and the film itself makes plenty of other exceptions as well. The s-word is used at least 13 times (not to mention the two times that Little B almost says it). We hear other profanities as well, including “a–,” “b–tard,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused five times, four of which also involve the word “d–n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Characters drink beer. A covert equipment dealer also sells “fun muffins.” Han eats one and begins to hallucinate. We know that Dante’s father was a notorious drug lord. Liquor flows at a party. Vodka is used as fuel. When someone suggests using bottles of wine as well, he’s told that just won’t work.

Other Negative Elements

This probably won’t surprise you, but people drive recklessly here. We hear about Dom’s crew’s checkered, sometimes felonious past (complete with clips from previous movies).

Given the Fast & Furious series’ emphasis on cars, it seems appropriate that most of its best messages would fit on a bumper sticker.

“You got no honor,” Dom tells Dante at one point. “Without honor, you got no family. Without family, you got nothing.”

Fast X is filled with similar aphorisms, embracing the values of family and friendship, faith and sacrifice. Those messages are nice, and sometimes even praiseworthy.

But, of course, encouraging its viewers to be better people isn’t Fast X ’s primary goal. This is all about giving its audience the adrenaline-fueled experience they’ve come to expect.

Naturally, Plugged In has come to expect the issues that go along with said experience. The violence and mayhem here are unremitting. People get hurt and sometimes die. The film sneezes out explosions as if it had some wicked seasonal allergies.

But while Dom trumpets the value of honor, let’s not lose sight of how many laws are broken in pursuit of Dom’s honorable goals. Or how many law enforcement officers have their patrol cars smashed and various bones broken.

If those elements went AWOL in Fast & Furious , of course, it wouldn’t be a Fast & Furious film. Those are necessary ingredients in this high-octane dish. The swearing? Well, this frenzied feast could easily throttle back on the spicy language.

For fans of the franchise, Fast X is an entertaining, somewhat frustrating addition to the canon. The series is beginning a long curtain call. So this installment features plenty of cliffhangers to ensure fans will be back for the next two chapters.

But while the storyline features a few surprises (which we’ve not spoiled here, hopefully), the content concerns are no surprise at all.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Fast X Reviews Are Here, See What Critics Are Saying About Jason Momoa’s Role In The Fast And Furious Franchise

Who's racing to the theater this weekend?

The Fast & Furious franchise has been entertaining moviegoers for over 20 years now with its street racing, high-stakes heists and themes of family. From what we know about Fast X , family loyalty will certainly come into play in the 10th installment of the series, with Jason Momoa joining the universe as Dante Reyes, son of Hernan Reyes , who was killed by Dwayne Johnson ’s Luke Hobbs in Fast Five . Fast X will see Dante trying to make Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family pay for their role in his father’s death, and with the blockbuster hitting theaters in just a couple of days, the reviews are in to give us an idea of what to expect.

First reactions to the 10th Fast & Furious movie were positive, with audiences praising what Jason Momoa adds to the stacked Fast X cast . Let’s get straight to the reviews, and we’re keeping it SPOILER FREE here, so have no fear as we kick things off with CinemaBlend’s review of Fast X . Eric Eisenberg rates the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, saying that while this installment beats out the previous two movies, there’s still a “whole lot of dumb.” Dante, however, is the best villain to ever come out of the franchise. Eisenberg continues:

He is the franchise's version of The Joker, blending flamboyance with sadism and a smile, and while the plotting at which he is the center is ridiculous, it's made digestible by the character's ludicrousness. You do wonder why Dante waited so long to execute his bloodthirsty plan and how he is able to get oh so many bombs everywhere he needs them to be, but the totality of the chaos he unleashes ends up being satisfying enough for one to look past those queries.

Kristy Puchko of Mashable says Fast X is stuffed with the plot twists, big stars and bonkers action we’ve come to expect, and Jason Momoa is deliciously evil, tapping into a freedom of expression that distinguishes him from the series’ other characters. The review continues:

Where they stride, he skips into action. They scowl or smirk. He beams with a cartoonishly broad grin, whether he's threatening the lives of children or the whole of the Vatican. Dom's crew favors a lot of bald heads, glistening in the sun and streetlights. Momoa not only brings his signature long locks to the role but also dons them in scunchied space-buns, while delivering a villain monologue and doing a deadly pedicure. It's madcap mayhem, and it's divine, giving this 22-year-old franchise a breath of fresh — if not air — then laughing gas.

Simon Thompson of The Playlist rates the flick a B- for being an “absurdly fun popcorn movie,” and says watching Jason Momoa’s performance is worth the price of admission, even for those who have never seen a Fast & Furious movie. From the review:

Momoa, under the encouraging eye of director Louis Leterrier, goes all in on creating a villain who is as flamboyant as he is menacing, stealing every scene he’s in. He’s fabulously megalomaniacal, part Joker and part pantomime baddie, mining the dark tones and comedy beats like his life depends on it. Momoa is always best when he is having fun with his acting, and what Fast X has given him is a role of a lifetime. The actor, who has described Dante as someone with ‘daddy issues’ and ‘sadistic, androgynous and a bit of a peacock,’ embodies and embraces those qualities flawlessly. Even though it is Vin Diesel’s at the top of this franchise’s Totem Pole, Fast X is Momoa’s movie. He is a revelationary riot.

Ryan Oquiza of Rappler says that if you’re able to rein in your expectations and be open to plenty of absurdity, there is a lot to enjoy about Fast X . However, with this being just Part 1 of the franchise’s conclusion, the story goes unfinished, and in regards to action, it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. According to the critic:

Fast X’s focus is action, loads of it. Many of which you’ve seen from Mission Impossible, DC, James Bond, and even past Fast films. It’s like listening to a band’s greatest hits album, but only to realize that they are running out of original ideas. And so Fast X is not really a film about anything new. It’s a film about ideas that work and ideas that are crafted to please the broadest consumer base.

Molly Freeman of ScreenRant also calls the movie “flawed but fun,” noting that the script serves more as an excuse to jump from one action scene to the next. However, Jason Momoa is a blast to watch as Dante, Freeman says, and in a franchise that has become known for its action and stunts, rather than its dialogue, Fast X exceeds all expectations. She continues:

Fast X is certainly a must-watch for any die-hard fan of the franchise. Though it may not live up to the heights of some of the franchise's past films, it's an entertaining action thrill ride from start to finish, one that will surely keep you hooked. Even casual viewers will find entertainment in the action set pieces, and thanks to flashbacks, it's fairly easy to jump into Fast X even for those who might have missed a previous movie or two. Though it's a little bit more over-the-top even in a franchise known for this very thing, Fast X is another fun and exciting ride tailor-made for the summer movie season.

If you’ve been waiting for the return of Dom’s found family to see where the newest blockbuster falls in the ranking of Fast and Furious movies , the time has finally come, with Fast X hitting the big screen on Friday, May 19. If you need a refresher on the franchise and want to check out all of the previous F&F films in order , here’s where the movies are available to stream . Also be sure to see what else is headed our way soon with our 2023 Movie Calendar .

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Heidi Venable is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend, a mom of two and a hard-core '90s kid. She started freelancing for CinemaBlend in 2020 and officially came on board in 2021. Her job entails writing news stories and TV reactions from some of her favorite prime-time shows like Grey's Anatomy and The Bachelor. She graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a degree in Journalism and worked in the newspaper industry for almost two decades in multiple roles including Sports Editor, Page Designer and Online Editor. Unprovoked, will quote Friends in any situation. Thrives on New Orleans Saints football, The West Wing and taco trucks.

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Fast X review – stupidly entertaining sequel offers more of the same

Vin Diesel et al return for an overstuffed Fast and Furious chapter that delivers giddily effective action but an outsized and silly villain

T he Fast & Furious franchise reached the ideal level of sublime ridiculousness with Fast Five, which brought Dom Toretto, Brian O’Conner and four films’ worth of gearhead rogues together for a compact heist thriller that’s basically Ocean’s Eleven with cars. It peaks with the ultimate smash-and-grab job, as Dom and Brian attach a giant bank vault to their Dodge Chargers and drag it through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, occasionally thwacking their pursuers like an improvised wrecking ball. The films that followed have tried nobly to top the simple, lizard-brain pleasure of this moment – the skydiving cars in Furious 7 come the closest – but recent entries have started to grind like metal-on-metal, scrambling to figure out how to top itself.

Fast X seems to recognize Fast Five as the top of the franchise bell curve, because it starts there, by retconning a super-villain out of a previous villain’s son. (It turns out there are unforeseen consequences for killing a crime boss with a flying bank vault.) By flashing back to the heist sequence, the film also announces itself as a return to the giddy excesses of the series’ best moments, embracing high camp and cartoonishly destructive violence while leaving behind the glum tone of entries like The Fate of the Furious. It may be dumb as a box of rocks, but there’s still something irresistibly vulgar about a film that nearly blows up the Vatican as a throat-clearing exercise.

After yadda-yadda-ing through an eye-rolling paean to “family”, which have become as obligatory to the series as James Bond’s martini order, Fast X works quickly to set up a multi-film arc around Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the vengeful son of Rio kingpin Herman Reyes. With a nasty sadistic streak and his father’s incalculable wealth at his disposal, Dante doesn’t seek merely to kill Dom, but make him and his associates suffer for his own personal amusement. He doesn’t mind an entire city suffering, too: after luring the team on a fake agency mission to Rome, he activates a bomb in a massive circular casing that rolls down the street like the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, leaving a trial of destruction across the ancient city. It’s only through Dom and company’s heroics that we still have a pope.

From there, Fast X labors to assemble a cast of characters that’s swollen like a wasp bite over 10 films, in part because the series is so notoriously reluctant to kill any of them off – at least permanently. So new-ish additions like Charlize Theron as cyberterrorist Cipher, John Cena as Dom’s long-lost brother Jakob, Scott Eastwood as beefy law enforcement agent Little Nobody, and Helen Mirren as Queenie Shaw, the militia-woman mother of Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), are all back, and more familiar faces are added, like Brie Larson as Mr Nobody’s daughter and Rita Moreno in the purely ceremonial role of a Toretto “abuelita”. That’s a lot of narrative mouths to feed, on top of the legacy characters and the film’s solution is to cut frantically through half a dozen subplots at once.

Director Louis Leterrier has a long track record of mediocre blockbusters to his credit, including the Edward Norton version of The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans and Now You See Me, but in taking the reins from Justin Lin, Leterrier adopts a tone closer to his Transporter 2, which remains one of Statham’s better vehicles. His camera pirouettes wildly around the action – Leterrier is as addicted to drunk aerial shots as Max Ophüls was to dolly tracks – and he leans into the comic absurdity as much as possible, leaving the physics of suspense to the Mission: Impossible franchise. Dom and his friends treat missions like arcade games where they have all the cheat codes.

The anything-goes mentality that drives Fast X backfires a little with Momoa, whose conception of Dante as a mincing, androgynous chaos demon owes a debt to Nicolas Cage in Face/Off and Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, but leans uncomfortably into the gay killer archetype. In a series that celebrates tough-guy bravado, Dante represents a feminized reactionary threat, though the bigger problem here is that Momoa isn’t as gifted as Cage or Depp at devouring the scenery. He’s not as dull as Theron’s whispery Lecter-isms in the previous two entries, but he lurches in the opposite direction, plotting the apocalypse in pigtails, nail polish and an array of half-buttoned satin shirts.

Still, there’s no better approach to a franchise this creatively exhausted than to stab it and steer. Like every Fast & Furious movie, Fast X wedges in a street race with sleek muscle cars and low-angle shots of hot spectators, but these films have long since ballooned into the über-action blockbuster series, a junk-food binge of world-saving, city-razing international spy missions never imagines a crash that can’t be survived or a dilemma that a nitro-boost can’t solve. It’s the type of bone-stupid enterprise where locations are established first by characters saying they’re going to Rome, then by helicopter shots of the Colosseum and other major landmarks and then by the title “ROME” in giant, screen-filling letters. Fast X has enough joyful self-awareness that resistance becomes futile. At a certain point, it feels better to give in and smile.

Fast X is out in cinemas on 19 May

Fast and Furious
Action and adventure films
Charlize Theron
Brie Larson
Jason Statham

Fast X Review

19 May 2023

The road is long, with many a winding turn. That leads us to who knows where… who knows where.

Given this is a franchise that started in 2001 with Californian street racers ripping off Panasonic VCRs, then turned them into international secret agents last seen launching a car into effing space (in 2021’s F9 ), it was hard to fathom where the Fast Saga could possibly escalate to next. But, with a new and capable pair of hands at the directing wheel in Louis ‘ The Transporter ’ Leterrier , Fast X screeches in determined to top all that’s gone before — while clinging tight to the Fast & Furious formula that made the series an unlikely box-office phenomenon.

It's all here: the perma-sleeveless Dominic Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) dispensing gravelly dime-store wisdom (“No-one starts at the finish line”; “Fear is the best teacher”; “Nothing’s impossible, you just have to have faith”). His ever-expanding team of heisters, bantering and bickering and making up and hugging. A token street race, featuring many close-ups of ladies’ bottoms. A bunch of ‘surprise’ guest appearances. Repeated use of the ‘f’ word (and we don’t mean ‘fuck’). A barbecue. And, of course, a fistful of OTT car stunts that “violate the laws of God and gravity,” as new Agency antagonist Aimes (Alan ‘ Reacher ’ Ritchson ) puts it during one chokingly tongue-in-cheek monologue.

It’s utterly ridiculous. It’s kinda brilliant.

So you’ll witness Dom tackling a flaming neutron bomb on the streets of Rome, using his car to fight with helicopters, and driving it down the side of a dam pursued by what appears to be an avalanche of fire. It’s utterly ridiculous. It’s kinda brilliant.

The thin plot-tissue connecting these entertainingly preposterous set pieces is provided by a bit of retconning (another F&F tradition) that inserts Jason Momoa ’s Dante Reyes into the thick of the climactic action of Fast Five , where his evil pappy Hernan dies. Described as both “a monster” and “the Devil”, this vengeful villain is hyped up as the deadliest baddie the Toretto crew has yet faced. But, if we’re supposed to treat Fast X as Infinity War on wheels, Dante doesn’t convince as a muscle-car Thanos. He spends much of his time perched in a high place with an impossibly good view, remote-controlling vehicles while cackling like a chunky Joker, dressed in a style reminiscent of Everything Everywhere ’s Jobu Tupaki and pulling off ballet poses. Momoa’s commitment to unhinged flamboyance almost works, but for the most part he’s just flummoxingly irksome. We’d like to have seen a bit less of Dante, and a bit more of the psychedelic muffin (don’t ask, just watch).

After recent revelations by Vin Diesel about the film being part one of a climactic trilogy , it doesn’t feel too spoilery to say Fast X ends on a massive cliff-hanger, giving its final moments the vibe of those old-timey matinee serials where you know you can’t trust anything you’ve just seen — especially given this 22-year-old series’ predilection for resurrection. But, hey, one shouldn’t overthink such things. This is Fast & Furious . Logic is but a vanishing point in its rear-view. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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‘Fast X’ Finds the Fun in the Franchise Again Thanks to Higher Stakes and Jason Momoa

A winning, funny turn from Momoa as the big villain proves the highlight in a ‘Fast’ entry that feels reinvigorated after the maudlin last movie.

(Clockwise, from left) Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Han (Sung Kang), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), Dom (Vin Diesel), Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry), Abuelita (Rita Moreno), Mia (Jordana Brewster), Tej (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, back to camera) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson, back to camera) in 'Fast X,' directed by Louis Leterrier.

‘ Fast X ’ opening in theaters on May 19th, is the latest entry in the sprawling, wildly successful franchise that begun in much more humble fashion as a take on ‘ Point Break ’s undercover lawman genre in 2001 and his since spiraled into a bombastic action franchise revolving around the endlessly repeated theme of family.

After a muted, disappointing entry with ‘ F9: The Fast Saga ’ in 2021 (which nevertheless did good business), it’s a relief to report that fans of the franchise, led by star/producer Vin Diesel , is a return to the ridiculous, stunt-heavy, common sense-free form that we’ve come know and appreciate.

What’s the story of ‘Fast X?

Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is back living in the family home in Los Angeles with wife Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) and son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry). It’s a relatively quiet time for Dom and his gang, punctuated by family barbecues, driving lessons for Brian and a visit from his Abuela ( Rita Moreno ).

But Dom’s peace is ruined when old enemy Cipher ( Charlize Theron ) shows up badly injured at his door one night, spinning a story of a new threat called Dante ( Jason Momoa ). He, it turns out, is the son of Hernan Reyes ( Joaquim de Almeida ), the drug kingpin that Dom and his team robbed and killed 10 years ago in Rio (as chronicled in the events of ‘ Fast Five ’ in 2011).

(From left) Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Han (Sung Kang) in 'Fast X,' directed by Louis Leterrier.

Soon, the flamboyant, crazed Dante is setting traps for our heroes, including luring Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ), Tej ( Ludacris ), Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ) and Han ( Sung Kang ) on a fake mission to Rome where they and others, including spy agency member Little Nobody ( Scott Eastwood ) must stop a giant, rolling bomb from destroying parts of Rome and the Vatican.

But when they’re all framed for the attack, the “family” is scattered to various parts of the world as Dante schemes and undermines them, stealing all their money and threatening their own family members.

Soon Dom is locked in a frantic battle with Dante, forced to rely on everyone he loves, even as they’re put in mortal danger. Can he succeed against this powerful villain?

(Right) Brie Larson is Tess in 'Fast X,' directed by Louis Leterrier.

Who else is in ‘Fast X’?

The cast for the movie includes the returning likes of Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw, Helen Mirren as Queenie Shaw, Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto, John Cena as Jakob Toretto, plus new recruits Brie Larson as Tess, Alan Ritchson as Aimes and Daniela Melchior as Isabel.

Jason Momoa as Dante in 'Fast X', directed by Louis Leterrier.

What are the problems of the movie?

For all its advantages, there are also the usually clunky elements, this entry still boasting scenes that make it seem as though a straight-to-DVD B-movie broke out in the middle of a summer blockbuster.

Actors who have won Oscars struggle with dialogue that would trip any actor up, whole moments sounding like they were written by feeding to suggestions to a ChatGPT AI that was then dropped on its hard drive, so leaden and first base are the results. It’s especially glaring for any scenes set in the mysterious “agency” spy division currently run by Ritchson’s Aimes. The man who is Jack Reacher on TV doesn’t break free of the dodgy lines he’s handed. And even Larson can’t make Tess work beyond some basic motivations.

And Diesel, despite being the core of the film, remains the one who treats it all so completely seriously that it’s actually less fun when he’s growling and putting the pedal to the metal.

(From left) Queen (Helen Mirren) and Dom (Vin Diesel) in 'Fast X,' directed by Louis Leterrier.

Even as the movie acknowledges its own ridiculous nature, you’ll end up giggling at how many times the word “family” is uttered as usual, and the number of familial connections between characters is becoming ever more ridiculous. Everyone Dom knows at this point is connected to someone else in the franchise. It’s not hard to imagine him running into someone at the local auto parts store who is a long-lost cousin.

Fortunately, ‘Fast X’ is nimbler than ‘F9’ and papers over some of these typical cracks with gusto .

‘Fast X’ receives 8.5 out of 10 stars.

Vin Diesel as Dom in 'Fast X,' directed by Louis Leterrier.

Other Movies Similar to ‘Fast X:’

‘ The Fast and the Furious ' (2001)
‘ 2 Fast 2 Furious ' (2003)
‘ The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift ' (2006)
' Fast & Furious ' (2009)
' Fast Five ' (2011)
' Fast & Furious 6 ' (2013)
' Furious 7 ' (2015)
' The Fate of the Furious ' (2017)
' Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ' (2019)
' F9 ' (2021)

Buy Tickets: 'Fast X' Movie Showtimes

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'Fast X' is produced by Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel, Justin Lin, Jeff Kirschenbaum and Samantha Vincent. The executive producers are Joseph M. Caracciolo, Jr., David Cain, Chris Morgan, Amanda Lewis and Mark Bomback.

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Fast X review: The end can’t come soon enough

“The 10th film in the Fast series shows its age as Fast X has too many characters and not enough of a compelling story to really care about the outcome.”

Jason Momoa plays a great Joker-like villain
All the insane automotive action you could want
Too many moving parts
Feels incomplete, even as part of a trilogy

Every time it looks like the Fast & Furious franchise is entering its final lap, Universal Studios and star/producer Vin Diesel find a way to extend the race. When a 10th Fast film was announced nearly a decade ago, it was expected to be the final chapter in the franchise. In 2021, the finale was split into two parts, and last week, Diesel broke the news that Fast X would instead be the first chapter in a trilogy .

Family matters

Fast x still delivers all the racing car action fans love, an overstayed welcome.

Ironically, despite the expected story decompression, the latest installment in the Fast franchise still manages to be overblown and overstuffed. Fast X is a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but instead of feeling like a complete feature, it unfolds like a weirdly paced season of high-budget television. There are so many characters, so many threads, so many set pieces that very few of them get the attention they need to feel satisfying. It’s still a fun and furious ride, and if you’re a fan of the series, that’ll likely be enough to satisfy you until the next chapter arrives in 2025, but crazy car-centric action sequences aside, Fast X is the messiest entry in a franchise where the laws of physics and storytelling have always been equally elastic.

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True to form for a series about a family of outlaws that collects new members like a Katamari ball, Fast X juggles a massive ensemble. Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is now focused on fatherhood, raising the precocious preteen Little B (Leo Abelo Terry) alongside his wife and partner in crime, Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez). The rest of the gang, however, is still on call at The Agency, an international spy organization that is, for all intents and purposes, S.H.I.E.L.D. from the Marvel Universe. When a mission goes south, the entire Toretto crew ends up on the run from the authorities, as well as from the author of their doom, cackling sociopath Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa). A high-stakes globe-trotting adventure ensues in which our heroes’ driving skills and personal ethos are tested, strange alliances are formed and shattered, and — needless to say — a whole lot of stuff goes “boom.”

It’s not that any one character gets stuck with nothing to do — quite the contrary, screenwriters Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin clearly make a concerted effort to give each of the regulars their own subplot — there’s simply not enough track for most of them to get to full speed. Naturally, Dom gets the most complete story, going head-to-head against an unpredictable psycho who’s dead set on making his life hell.

Momoa’s Dante is very obviously designed to be Dom’s Joker , a flamboyant supervillain who’s always two steps ahead of the hero (he even drives a purple car). It may have begun as an attempt to repeat the success of Heath Ledger’s iconic performance in The Dark Knight , but Momoa overshoots it and lands somewhere between Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamill, which turns out to be a terrific fit for this bonkers universe. Momoa is plainly having a ball in the role, and that fun is contagious.

Everyone else suffers a bit from the need to squeeze their shtick into the runtime. Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) get the most complete subplot ,and their chemistry is as playful as ever, but tech expert Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) is still mostly an exposition machine and recently resurrected cool guy Han (Sung Kang) mostly feels like a tagalong. John Cena returns as Dom’s estranged brother, Jakob, but this time around he’s basically just playing John Cena, with all traces of his character’s edges completely filed down.

Multiple supporting players from previous films turn up for a scene or two, plus there are new characters who we’re supposed to get attached to like Brie Larson’s secret agent Tess and Diana Melchior’s street racer Isabel, but they do not receive enough time to make a strong impression. In the plus column, Rodriguez does get her contractual one barn-burning brawl per picture, and there’s still a special room waiting in heaven for whatever genius figured out that Letty’s thing should be motorcycles.

Still, one can’t escape the impression that Fast has gotten too big for its own good, that maybe the franchise has reached the point where it would be better off branching its ensemble into their own films before reuniting Avengers-style. Or, if they must do a three-part finale, it might have been a good idea to keep a few characters on the sidelines this time around so that everyone present could have a little more space to open up the throttle.

As much as its story wobbles, Fast X certainly delivers the insane vehicular mayhem that fans have come to expect. Dom and the gang face a series of escalating video game stages, high-speed puzzles that can only be solved via precision driving. Director Louis Leterrier and the action design team have found more clever ways to stage vehicular warfare, and there are plenty of triumphant moments worth hooting and hollering over.

The drawback to the increasing insanity of the automotive action is that it no longer has any sense of actual danger or stakes. Dominic Toretto does not take fall damage, and neither do any of his allies. Every character (save for Ramsey) is both an elite-level performance driver and a master of mixed martial arts. Two members of the gang have returned from the dead. It’s hard to believe any of them is ever in real jeopardy.

Fast X attempts to subvert some of the audience’s expectations in this regard, but bolsters them just as often. The Fast franchise has become so committed to being comfort food for action fans that even its most violent twists feel softened, as if by some sort of narrative airbag (this is ironic, seeing as airbags do not seem to exist in the Fast universe). There’s nothing in Leterrier’s music video direction or in the cliché-ridden screenplay that establishes any sort of reality, even a heightened one. That departure from reality is some of the appeal of the Fast movies to begin with, but the personal stakes of Fast X demand a personal investment that just isn’t earned.

The Fast movies, we are always told, are about family. And here’s the thing about family — whether you’re referring to a family you’re born into or a family you choose, much of the appeal is that they’re familiar . Family is the people you are used to and will miss when they’re gone. Over the past two decades, we’ve all gotten used to the Fast movies. We love when the Toretto crew comes to visit; it’s like a holiday. But even family can overstay their welcome. Sometimes a gathering leaves you wondering whether it’s really the people you’re fond of, or just the routine. Fast X may not convince you to skip the next barbecue, but it may make you grateful that there are only a few of them left on the calendar.

Fast X is now playing in theaters nationwide. For more Fast and Furious content, check out all the Fast & Furious movies, ranked and all the Fast & Furious villains, ranked .

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There's no shortage of performers in the next installment of the Fast and Furious franchise. Now, there's another Oscar winner in the mix. Brie Larson has been added to the cast of Fast and Furious 10 in an undisclosed role.

Larson won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Joy Newsome in Room. Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron are the only other Oscar winners among the Fast Saga cast. But only Theron and Larson are confirmed to appear in the next film. Larson's other film credits include The Glass Castle, Kong: Skull Island, and Captain Marvel.

The Fast and Furious movies always faced a challenge when it comes to finding an adversary who can believably menace Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto. However, Universal Pictures may have found a formidable bad guy for Fast and Furious 10. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jason Momoa is in talks to join the cast and potentially play the film's primary villain.

Momoa is best known for his role as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones and his appearances as Aquaman in the DC Extended Universe. Momoa will headline his latest DC sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, later this year. Some of Momoa's other genre credits include Stargate Atlantis, the 2021 remake of Dune, and the leading role in AppleTV+'s original series See.

Given everything going on in the world right now, it's no surprise that stories about the end of civilization as we know it have become increasingly popular. But even in a crowded field, Netflix film Don't Look Up might offer the most accurate depiction so far of what the apocalypse might look like.

What might be surprising, however, is how funny the end of the world can be.

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Fast X Feels Like a Head Injury

The Fast & Furious franchise has been about many things since it started as a comparatively modest street-racing thriller back in 2001. It’s been about cars, obviously: cars that go fast and drift around corners and, in later movies, prove themselves capable of launching into orbit and tenderly catching people on their hoods as though cradling them in cushioned catcher’s mitts. It’s about family, in both the biological and the found sense, with the latter slowly sucking in so many past antagonists that the movies occasionally take a beat to acknowledge who has previously tried to kill whom. It’s about the lingering allure of Hollywood bombast, and about the successful exporting of the kind multiethnic ensemble that same Hollywood used to insist the rest of the world didn’t want, and about gyrating butts in close-up. But now that the Fast & Furious es are firmly in their dotage — Fast X is more self-referential remix project than film, an idiot 2046 for a series out of new roads to zoom down — what they’re especially about is the state of stardom. No actor seems able to escape the gravitational pull of these movies, and it doesn’t feel like a spoiler to note that some well-known ones make unannounced appearances in this latest installment.

Between all the returning cast members and the new ones, Fast X is deliriously unwieldy. It’s barely able to attend to all the big names involved — like, who needed Brie Larson to be in this and why? — and the way it hoards them turns the movie into an unintended treatise on how much power has tipped from stars to brands. The celebrities need this aging blockbuster saga more than it needs them, and the ones who try to leave come crawling back eventually, with their characters’ deaths or departures retroactively explained away. Vin Diesel himself took off after The Fast and the Furious , which alongside Pitch Black helped vault him into prominence. But by 2009, after The Chronicles of Riddick flopped and he’d starred in a fish-out-of-water babysitting comedy , he wasn’t just back in the role of Dominic Toretto, he’d been promoted to producer as well. If you can’t leave the series, you may as well become it, and Diesel’s fused himself to this IP so thoroughly that, mid-production on Fast X , he managed to chase away director Justin Lin , who alongside writer Chris Morgan was one of the franchise’s main architects (Lin retains a screenplay credit). The Transporter ’s Louis Leterrier took over, though the film plays more like it was made by an AI versed in the existing movies but not quite up to spitting out something coherent itself.

It is, despite all this, a decent diversion, though watching it feels like sustaining a head injury. Not far into the run time, a bloody Charlize Theron shows up at the Toretto house (remember how Charlize Theron is in these now?) as yet another villain looking to turn ally. “There’s a war coming. Sides will be chosen and everyone you love will be destroyed,” she gasps out; these are basically evergreen words for this franchise that would have fit into at least four past films. Theron’s cyberterrorist Cipher has had a run-in with ascendant baddie Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), who in classic fashion has been retconned into the series as the son of Hernan Reyes, the Rio de Janeiro drug lord played by Joaquim de Almeida in Fast Five . Momoa does not attempt a Brazilian accent, but he is — how to put this — doing something like a femme affectation? Dante wears flamboyant outfits, paints his dead victims’ toenails, and trills “ Buongiorno! ” while tumbling a neutron bomb through the streets of Rome like a giant pinball. He jokes about looking to tone down the masculinity and is vaguely reminiscent of the gender-dissident revolutionary played by Silvero Pereira in Bacurau , though that’s surely overthinking things. Mostly, Momoa is going big, though given how outsize Fast X is, it just ends up registering on the same scale as everything else. I didn’t hate it!

Fast X finds the family getting framed by Dante and trying to find him while being pursued by the Agency (formerly headed by Kurt Russell, the only actor in the world not in this movie), the secret organization Dom & Co. have done jobs for in the past. The characters get split up and clumped into their own subgenres — Nathalie Emmanuel, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, and Ludacris are doing light comedy, while Michelle Rodriguez and Theron are in a gritty escape flick, John Cena and Leo Abelo Perry (playing Dom’s son) embark on a buddy road-trip movie, and Larson is in a girlboss spy drama alongside Reacher ’s Alan Ritchson as new Agency boss Aimes. Flipping between all these tones is disorienting, but the movie settles down whenever Diesel is onscreen, mostly because Diesel is acting harder than anyone has ever acted in their life, and also because the movie is for him. Every line he delivers feels engineered to be clipped and used without context for promotional purposes. Shots linger for a beat too long on his face, which has begun accruing the vague unreality of a CGI creation. When he, say, jerks his head around at an unexpected sound, it’s so dramatic it can startle a laugh out of you. Fast X may treat movie stars like they’re a dime a dozen, but it’s an altar for its lead, lifting him up like a minor deity fallen to earth. The series may be running on fumes, but as it coasts toward what’s promised to be its final episode, you can at least count on it doing everything it can to make Diesel look larger than life and sound twice as gravelly.

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Fast X Reviews: Critics Share Mixed First Reactions

Following the first worldwide screening of the tenth Fast & Furious movie, Fast X , critics shared widely mixed reactions to what they saw.

Before the official summer blockbuster season brings a new round of thrilling movies, Fast & Furious 10 will continue the story’s incredible 22-year run on the big screen behind both veterans and new faces alike .

The Incredible Hulk ’s Louis Leterrier is in the director’s seat for this muscle-car-filled epic, adding his own stamp to the franchise with both this movie and 2025’s Fast & Furious 11 .

But with mixed reviews from critics over the years, even as the movies continue to excel at the box office , what is the initial verdict on the Fast family's latest globetrotting adventure?

Fast & Furious 10 First Reviews from Critics

Critics shared their initial spoiler-free reactions after the world premiere event for Universal Pictures' Fast X , which debuts in theaters worldwide on Friday, May 19.

Gizmondo's Germain Lussier held nothing back on Fast & Furious 10 , calling it "the worst Fast yet" but also praising Jason Momoa's "God-Level" performance on screen:

"'Fast X' is the worst 'Fast' yet. Yes, including [insert your least fave here]. The action is fun but it's the 1st film to not up the ante from the last one & the trademark notion of 'Family' is an afterthought. But! Jason Momoa is God-Level in it and worth the price of admission."

Insider's Kristen Acuna teased "the most shocking ending of the franchise" coming in this new movie, admitting it wasn't perfect but also comparing it to Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War in scale:

"Caught "Fast X' last week! It’s a wild, non-stop action thrill ride that delivers the most shocking ending of the franchise, so far. Not perfect (end may divide fans), but it’s been growing on me & I can’t wait to see it again. Universal's def trying to make this its 'Infinity War.'

Forbes' Simon Thompson also highlighted Momoa's villain for adding "a sharp edge and some refreshing dark humor" to the franchise but called the rest "ludicrousness" while noting that it's exactly what fans expect to see:

"'Fast X' belongs to Jason Momoa and his decadent bad guy, Dante Reyes. Fierce and flamboyant, his perilous peacocking adds a sharp edge and some refreshing dark humor. The rest is ludicrousness with clunky elements but it is stupidly entertaining. What the Fast were you expecting?"

Momoa got even more praise from Cinema Blend's Eric Eisenberg , calling him the reason that the series is "back on track" and describing the whole movie as "a win:"

"'Fast X' gets the 'Fast & Furious series back on track,' and reason #1 is Jason Momoa, who plays Dante like F&F's version of The Joker. He's a gleeful psychopath, and it's delightful. Along with a story that avoids what made 'Fate Of The Furious' and 'F9' feel stale, it's a win."

Will Fast & Furious 10 Live Up to Standards?

Many are at expecting Fast & Furious 10 to be one of the highest-grossing movies of the year , especially after F9 shocked the world with a $726.2 million haul smack-dab in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2021.

With a star-studded cast that features Oscar-winner Brie Larson alongside Vin Diesel and John Cena , amongst others, fans will be in for another wildly emotional adventure filled with stakes, speed, and unbelievable action.

The cast and crew seem to have had a blast developing this new sequel for its release, which Universal is hoping will translate into a movie that will land well with the fanbase even after such mixed reactions from critics.

And with rumors that this could actually be the first of three movies closing out the trilogy instead of only two, it's clear that the Fast family will be a regular presence in the spotlight for the foreseeable future.

Fast X debuts in theaters worldwide on Friday, May 19.

Fast & Furious 10 Post-Credits Scene Gets Spoiled by New Report

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Fast X (United States, 2023)

Despite boasting a healthy 141-minute running time, Fast X is not a complete movie. It has a beginning and a middle but no end. Assured that audiences will return like lemmings for future installments of the Fast/Furious series, the filmmakers seemingly felt no compunction about concluding Fast X with a series of cliffhangers, keeping the fates of most of the characters in doubt. Although this probably won’t bother die-hard fans of the franchise, it’s a gamble where more casual viewers are concerned.

Fast X brings little that’s new to a series that has been repeating itself since it went hyperkinetic with installment #4 . It’s all action all the time. Yet, for an action sequence to work, something has to be at stake, otherwise it's just sound and fury signifying nothing. In Fast X, there's plenty of noise and CGI (some of it on the dodgy, cheap-looking side) and things crashing and blowing up, but there's never a sense that it means anything. No danger. No peril. It's all loud, visually expressive, and BORING. And that's the core problem. It claims to have characters but that's a lie. It claims to have a storyline but that's a fallacy. There's nothing here. The Emperor has new clothes. It's a big, hollow vat of steaming excess.

Fast X opens with a retcon of the climax of Fast Five , inserting a few new characters into repurposed footage from the original film. (This also allows for a Paul Walker cameo without having to resort to any sort of cinematic chicanery.) Turns out that Fast Five ’s bad guy, Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almedia), had a devoted son named Dante (Jason Momoa) who is injured in the car chase that results in his father’s death. His time for revenge has now come and, in keeping with his clearly impaired mental state, he is determined to inflict maximum pain on Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) before killing him. This involves framing Dom and his cohorts for a terrorist attack in Rome, then setting them up one-by-one for slaughter. Dom’s wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), is captured and sent to a Black Ops center for interrogation/torture. His son, left in the care of his sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), and brother, Jakob (John Cena), barely escapes a home raid. A quartet of his friends – Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris ‘Ludcaris’ Bridges), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Han (Sung Kang) – find themselves set adrift in London with their bank accounts drained. Like a flamboyant maestro, Dante keeps pushing buttons, leading to a very typical Fast/Furious climax that comes without any kind of resolution. Along the way, new and familiar faces make appearances, including (but not limited to) Helen Mirren, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Rita Moreno, and Brie Larson. None have screen time to match the credibility they bring to the proceedings.

This is one of those reviews where I feel like throwing up my hands and saying “Why bother?” With these movies, people no longer expect a good film; they just want to see over-the-top action scenes and catch up with familiar characters, even if those characters are just going through the motions. Rumor has it that Fast X is intended to be the first volume of a three-part story designed to bring the franchise to an end. That’s plenty of time for these old dogs (star Vin Diesel, director Louis Leterrier, co-screenwriter Justin Lin) to learn new tricks but, judging by how close the movies are coming to self-parody, I’m not holding my breath.

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Die Hard (1969)
Baby Driver (2017)
Speed (1994)
Revolver (2007)
Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
Ice Road, The (2021)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Iron Giant, The (1999)
Find Me Guilty (2006)
Pacifier, The (2005)
Babylon A.D. (2008)
Avatar (2009)
Avatar (2022 Re-Release) (2022)
Girlfight (2000)
Fast & Furious (2009)
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
Machete Kills (2013)
Dune: Part One (2021)
(There are no more better movies of Jason Momoa)
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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fast X’ on Peacock, in Which Jason Momoa Makes a Floundering Franchise Even More Annoying

Where to stream:, john cena on working with “alphas” vin diesel and the rock in ‘fast & furious’: “you get two, there can only be one”, vin diesel says he’s moving forward with final ‘fast and furious’ movie, can you smell when the rock is cooked dwayne johnson’s career is on the ropes, vin diesel accused of molesting, kissing former assistant without her consent in sexual battery lawsuit.

Fast X ( now on Peacock , in addition to streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ) is the first of, god help us, a planned three-film mega-finale for a series that wore all the tread off its tires about three movies ago. THAT DOESN’T MEAN THIS NEW MOVIE IS BAD THOUGH, he said, convincing nobody, not even himself. This franchise’s M.O. is more more more, so this time, the already sprawling cast – call ’em a FAM’LY but only if you must – is freshened up with the addition of Jason Momoa as a wacky new villain, Rita Moreno as a great-grandma and Brie Larson as a wholly forgettable government agent. They join headliner Vin Diesel and everyone else, including Michelle Rodriguez, John Cena, Tyrese Gibson, Charlize Theron, Jordana Brewster, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Jason Statham, Dark Helmet’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate, Helen Mirren for some reason, Grumpy Cat (via archival footage), your mom and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver. Am I forgetting anyone (without letting any spoiler cats out of the bag)? Probably. I openly admit to walking into this movie with preconceived negative bias, which is partly due to director Justin Lin quitting the gig (he reportedly said the movie “isn’t worth my mental health”) and being replaced by director of too many B-minus movies Louis Leterrier, and also is the natural result of having mirthlessly endured the previous nine movies. Maybe I’m in the minority with that one (these movies do make a lot of dough), but for the life of me, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m immune to mass hypnosis or something.

FAST X : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a repurposed sequence from (plumbs the decrepit depths of my memory; double-checks Wikipedia) Fast Five – you know the one, where Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his FAM’LY stole a big-ass safe from a bank in Rio de Janeiro by shooting it with harpoons on cables and dragging it behind their automobiles. TEN YEARS AGO, a subtitle blares. The money in that safe belonged to the Reyes family, and the insane violence that occurred in the wake of the heist resulted in the death of the patriarch – and the guy’s son has been really P.O.’d for a decade. His name is Dante (Momoa), and he’s just now finally executing his revenge scheme, which is so convoluted and covers all the angles and bases and thinks ahead so many steps, it should’ve taken two decades to concoct.

But before we get to that, we catch up with Dom as he teaches his son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry), nickname Little B, how to drive. Well, not just to drive, but to leave smoldering rubber figure-eights on the pavement of a parking lot with Dom’s signature slate-gray Dodge Charger. The kid’s like, seven years old or something, but it’s never too early to learn how to tear ass. Tearing ass has saved Dom’s life dozens of times, as you’re all too aware. Then they gather for a barbeque with Dom’s wife Letty (Rodriguez) and Crew peeps Rej (Bridges) and Roman (Pearce) and Ramsey (Emmanuel) and Mia (Brewster) and Han (Kang), and also Dom’s grandma (Moreno), who arrives to deliver heavy-handed speeches about FAM’LY. Now we know where Dom gets it.

That night, there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Cipher (Theron). Yeah, she’s a bad guy, but she’s in rough shape and she manages to talk Dom out of finishing the job. She got the tar walloped out of her by Dante and his goons, and she’s here to enlist Dom’s help – the enemy of my enemy, and all that. Thus begins the most overwrought snaking winding tangled pretzeled contortion of a revenge plot ever put to celluloid, one that busts up Dom’s crew for the whole damn entire movie, so consider that a warning (they’re prolly saving the big reunion for 12 Fast 12 Furious 12 , due somewheres around 2027). Roman and Ramsey and Han and Rej go to Rome for a gig only to learn it’s a trap, resulting in a maniacal chase sequence in which they barrel through the city in a Paw Patroller with Dante’s giant bomb in the back and Dom tears ass and Letty rips it up on her motorcycle and the bomb gets loose and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls like it was on top of spaghetti before it explodes and nearly destroys the Vatican, and the whole escapade wraps with Helen Mirren saying to Dom, “It ain’t no Roman holiday, and you ain’t no Gregory Peck” as they look upon the smoldering wreckage of Rome, to which I can only respond, good Christ .

This is all rather nuts, but par for the F/F course. It’s all downhill from here, I’m afraid. The plot eventually enlists Dom’s brother Jakob (Cena) to babysit Little B when he becomes Dante’s kidnapping target, and puts American gov’t agents Tess (Larson) and Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in the middle of the brouhaha, and rubber gets burnt from Yuma to Antarctica and many points in-between. There’s a great bit where Aimes sums up Dom’s crooks-turned-heroes crew by saying, “If it rejects the laws of god and gravity, they did it twice,” which is soon rendered a lie, because there’s a third and fourth and fifth time – at least – yet to come in this movie. And after that, it’ll cliffhang us and make us wait two years for some resolution.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Twenty-first-century action movie franchises, ranked:

1. John Wick

1a. Mission: Impossible

2. Planet of the Apes

163. Fast and Furious

Performance Worth Watching: So, so many paychecks being cashed here. But I will say Theron stands out as someone who takes this shit very seriously without taking it very seriously at all, if that makes sense, and Cena’s upbeat-goofball tone is disarming and funny. Between them, they draw a few effortless laughs in a movie that otherwise tongue-in-cheeks itself to death.

Memorable Dialogue: Cipher drops this doozy while still bleeding from Dante’s assault: “Fought the devil tonight. Honestly, I always thought it was me – kinda disappointing.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: All the Fast X hype’s been about Momoa’s nutty, out-there performance as the flamboyant villain, but remember, context is everything; in comparison to the other performances here, it’s definitely… different . Colorful. Campy in the opposite direction of Diesel, a true foil for Dom’s poker-faced man of few grunts, words and/or grunted words. Yet by any reasonable criteria outside the Fast and Furious bubble, Momoa’s grandstanding is annoying tryhardism that begs comparison to Johnny Depp’s more grating roles. It’s memorable for all the wrong reasons. Maybe some will find it amusing, but it’s just more sand in the jockey shorts of haters (he said, looking for the nearest bidet).

I understand why Leterrier and Momoa make the decisions they do, because it’s clear after nine noisy OTT action-smash outings, this series needs a shot in the arm. It peaked creatively a few movies ago and has since devolved into repetitive spectacle and something I like to call rampant franchiseism, where you need to know all the ins and outs of the previous films to comprehend the new one. If you’re not up to snuff, you either have to put in the work ahead of time or sit back and watch a nonsensical blur of faces and color and explosions. It ceases to be dumbass entertainment and becomes more stultifying than your 11th-grade teacher’s monotone lecture on The Agony and the Ecstasy .

Structurally, Fast X consists of a handful of subplots that Leterrier tosses into the playground like marbles. They roll around here, and there: There’s the one where Dom ends up in a street race against Dante in Rio (a return to the series’ dopey-ass roots), the one where Letty wakes up in a secret prison next to Cipher, the one where Jakob and Little B ram around in a flying kayak, the one where Rej and Roman and Han and Ramsey fart around and end up reacquainting with an old frenemy, the one with Brie Larson and the other agent guy, the one with Mia that abruptly stops. Sometimes, the subplots turn up familiar faces from past movies, and eventually, a couple of them intertwine but never reach anything resembling a satisfying conclusion. Taking into account that Fast X isn’t a complete movie, but rather one-third of a larger whole yet to be finished, lack of resolution is a given, but getting to the to-be-continued dots-of-ellipsis ending should be more enjoyable. There’s one shot here in which Rodriguez’s motorcyclist stunt-double pulls off a badass maneuver – probably with the help of CGI, the visual lifeblood of this movie – that inspired a big laugh and broke me out of a stupor, but for the other two hours and 20-and-three-quarters minutes of this movie, I was bored out of my skull.

Our Call: Out of gas. Spinning its tires. Stuck in the ditch. Slid too far off the road. Grinding its gears. Crashed and burning with one wheel spinning. Insert your automobile cliche here. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Movie Reviews

Three eye-opening documentaries you can stream right now.

Linda Holmes

From the HBO documentary Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion. HBO hide caption

From the HBO documentary Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion.

True crime docs, scammer docs, serious docs ... one of the most notable developments of the streaming era of television is that there are new documentary films and series coming out constantly . The difficulty for someone who might want to check some of them out is that they go by in a blur, and a lot of them have similar-looking titles and promotion. There are still big-ticket entries — on April 21, HBO will premiere a follow-up series to its huge true-crime hit The Jinx — but there are also a lot of lower-profile projects flying by, so let's take a moment to check in with a few current ones.

What Jennifer Did

A feature-length film about a 2010 home invasion that killed a woman and left her husband in a coma, What Jennifer Did is mostly told from the point of view of the police who gradually zeroed in on the couple's daughter, who was home at the time. Police-side crime documentaries tend to be the least interesting to me, and in this case, it feels like there's a tremendous amount of context missing about the family in favor of a fairly simple "she wanted to be with her boyfriend" narrative. But I say that in part because I have read the 2015 piece by Karen Ho in Toronto Life that considers more broadly what led to this bizarre act. Netflix, available now.

Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion

I can honestly tell you I was not very familiar with the Brandy Melville brand before I watched this film, which tells the story of how social media helped make a juggernaut out of a whole lot of nondescript tiny shirts. (It's more complicated than that, and ... also not.) The story of the gross in-store culture (which reminded me a lot of parts of the Netflix film White Hot, about Abercrombie & Fitch ) is interesting and pretty lively, but I would have preferred a little more time spent on the fast-fashion element, which I do think is ripe for more documentary work. Max, available now.

The Synanon Fix

Sometimes, it feels like documentaries are their own expanded universe. I was just watching an entirely different show about the "troubled teen" industry and its dark history, and it mentioned how Synanon, which began in California as a program to treat addiction, influenced much of what became the "we will grab your badly behaved teenager from their bed, take them to some secluded location, allow them no contact with anybody, and turn them around" model. And now, Synanon has its own docuseries, which considers whether and when Synanon turned into what you would call a cult. (Was it the head-shaving? The mass weddings? The dictates about reproduction?) But what stands out the most is the consideration of how a program and a community can change shape, and it takes a while for people inside and outside it to register those changes. HBO, airing now.

We're only scratching the surface of what's out there — Netflix's #1 show as I write this is their Unlocked: A Jail Experiment , about a "program" that gives incarcerated men more freedom. And I am 100% committed to finding time before it expires on April 20 to watch Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros , the latest from the great documentarian Frederick Wiseman, which is available on PBS.

This piece also appeared in NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what's making us happy.

Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify .

Oscars 2024

Yes, these 5 oscar-nominated documentaries take on tough topics — watch them anyway.

documentaries

Screen Rant

The long game review: a high-energy sports movie that is a tribute to texas, golf, & friendship.

Following the true story of a Mexican-American Texas golf team in the 1950s, The Long Game uplifts the audience but doesn't shy away from reality.

The Long Game truthfully portrays the camaraderie of young Mexican-American golfers in 1950s Del Rio.
The film's fast-paced narrative keeps the story moving, although character relationships are not fully explored.
While lacking in character depth, The Long Game balances serious themes of racism with the joy of golf and friendship.

The Long Game has the difficult job of maintaining the integrity of true events and people while creating a concise and well-balanced narrative. It takes place 1950s Del Rio, Texas and follows a group of young Mexican-American highschoolers who form a golf team and compete against the all-white teams that dominated the sport at the time. At the heart of the story is JB Peña, a World War II veteran and school superintendent who will stop at nothing to get the boys and himself recognized and respected as part of the golf community.

JB Peña and his wife moved to the small town of Del Rio, TX. When JB is rejected by a country club on the basis of his skin color, he's devastated. But his world soon collides with a group of young Latino golf caddies who work there, and JB is inspired by the handmade course the boys built to teach themselves golf.

The Long Game truthfully tells its story
The film's strengths lies in the camaraderie of JB and his friends
The Long Game tells a well-balanced story
The character relationships aren't fully explored
There's an overall lack of character development

Julio Quintana helms the film as the director, and there's never any doubt that he has a clear vision for the film's trajectory.

Like many of the best sports movies based on real-life events , The Long Game is aware of the strengths and weaknesses of its genre. There is heavy material woven through the story, and the serious instances of violence and racism are treated delicately. However, The Long Game has no intentions of being a morality tale and is most concerned with the hard work and joy the characters find through each other and the game of golf. Julio Quintana helms the film as the director, and there's never any doubt that he has a clear vision for the film's trajectory.

Fast Pacing & High Energy Keeps The Long Game's Story Moving

The film rarely drags or lingers on a scene.

From the first shot, The Long Game jumps off the screen, practically begging us to leap off the couch and join in on the fun. The central group of boys is boisterous, though they have a deep affection for each other. Their dynamic, in the beginning, is endearing, and this sense of friendship and belonging within their group is an enduring aspect of the movie. Quintana understands youthful exuberance well, but the subdued resignation of JB (Jay Hernandez) is just as compelling. From the start, the audience understands that golf is more than a game to JB, it's acceptance.

While the movie is about much more than golf, the story misses the opportunity to use the game to its fullest potential as a metaphor.

Golf might be some people's favorite sport, but for many, the nuances of the game and the skills demonstrated onscreen will be lost on them. However, The Long Game grasps this and uses it to its advantage. Almost every tournament is portrayed through montage, with the film only slowing down to show particularly pivotal moments. This has its pros and cons, as it means the game of golf never has the chance to be viewed as boring by the audience, but also that none of the games carry enormous weight within the narrative.

While the movie is about much more than golf, the story misses the opportunity to use the game to its fullest potential as a metaphor. There are scenes that The Long Game gives ample time to while whizzing through dramatic climaxes between central characters. Character motivations can get lost in the story's pace, namely with Joe (Julian Works) and Frank (Dennis Quaid), the two characters who serve as foils to JB and round out the narrative. They're strong-willed and compelling men, but their internal struggles aren't clear enough. Not to mention that Joe's friends and teammates are overlooked.

The Long Game (2024)

There is an undercurrent of patriotism and militaristic pride throughout the film. While The Long Game actively grapples with what it means to be Mexican-American and how Mexicans were and still are treated as second-class citizens simply because they're not white, there is a sense that every character is proud of their country and to be American. The film is decidedly apolitical, and there's ultimately no requirement for the movie to take a stance. It's not the job of The Long Game to make a statement, and the parallels between the military and team sports mirror each other nicely.

10 Movies About The Home Front In World War II

Though the characters are underdeveloped, the emotional impact is strong, few of the characters are fully explored, but the ending provides an uplifting climax.

Though The Long Game is just under two hours, we never get the opportunity to fully know the characters. There are hints of deeper issues that signal the characters have fully formed lives, but these moments never get more than a scene or two to develop. Some of the most egregious omissions of character development are in Lucy Peña (Jaina Lee Ortiz), JB's wife, and Daniela Torres (Paulina Chávez), Joe's girlfriend. They have definitive traits and independent desires, but they are viewed only through their connection to the men in their lives.

From the first shot, The Long Game jumps off the screen, practically begging us to leap off the couch and join in on the fun.

The three characters who are given the most time to evolve and grow, Joe, JB, and Frank, are still relative mysteries by the end of the film. One of the most compelling dynamics is that between Joe and his father, but it's explored very little onscreen. This illustrates the biggest issue with The Long Game; it attempts to tackle too much and loses strong character work in the process. In this way, the momentum of the film betrays itself. Though some energy might have been lost in exploring these relationships, it would have benefited the story.

However, the inherent universality of the narrative gives the plot strong highs and lows despite not knowing too much about the characters. If anything, it's a testament to what the film accomplishes that there's a desire to spend more time with the story. Similar to the lack of character development, questions about generational divides and assimilation are only mildly touched upon. In this way, The Long Game doesn’t push itself far enough, but ultimately, it successfully and truthfully tells the story it set out to tell and has fun along the way.

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Spy x Family Code: White

Banjô Ginga, Kazuhiro Yamaji, Hiroyuki Yoshino, Haruka Okamura, Tomoya Nakamura, Yûko Kaida, Emiri Kato, Kenshô Ono, Saori Hayami, Kento Kaku, Ken'ichirô Matsuda, Takuya Eguchi, Ayane Sakura, Atsumi Tanezaki, Shunsuke Takeuchi, Hana Sato, and Natsumi Fujiwara in Spy x Family Code: White (2023)

After receiving an order to be replaced in Operation Strix, Loid decides to help Anya win a cooking competition at Eden Academy, by making the director's favorite meal in order to prevent hi... Read all After receiving an order to be replaced in Operation Strix, Loid decides to help Anya win a cooking competition at Eden Academy, by making the director's favorite meal in order to prevent his replacement. After receiving an order to be replaced in Operation Strix, Loid decides to help Anya win a cooking competition at Eden Academy, by making the director's favorite meal in order to prevent his replacement.