Fast X

Fast X is, in every way that the film is enjoyable, a testament to the second-unit teams who describe the crashing action and the VFX studios that knit this disparate coverage together, allowing camera perspectives to come unshackled from their physical limits to zip around like curious insects (in this sense, Fast X is very much post-Michael Bay's Ambulance). Although pre-production and principal photography were begun by series mainstay Justin Lin, a falling out with Vin Diesel means that this tenth instalment is now credited solely to Louis Leterrier, a director who hit the ground running in 2005 with Unleashed (or Danny the Dog as it's known in Leterrier's native France) then never came close to scaling the same heights. Michelle Rodriguez revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that not only was this handover a few weeks shy of instantaneous but that a fight sequence between her character and Charlize Theron's Cipher was accomplished without any principal director in place. This point notable because this specific set-to, staged in a futuristic surgical theatre, is easily the highlight of Fast X: a crunchy back and forth between two actresses with very little else to do in the wider feature that uses shattered glass both as an improvised weapon and as an editing exclamation point. Other than that, Mr Diesel's efforts to elevate his Dominic Toretto from a rage case petrolhead to an invincible folk hero are a noticeable, and consistent, drag on the film. This insistence on relentless self-mythologising not only renders every new, radioactive, danger instantly moot, it also muscles out more of the piece's genuinely entertaining elements - be that John Cena as a world class entertainer of children or Jason Momoa swapping beauty tips with his decomposing henchmen. 

F9

F9's most arresting minutes are a series of beautifully grainy, magic hour memories that Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto uses to make sense of his current predicament. Initially glimpsed as an opening gambit - complete with a period appropriate (and slightly beaten up) Universal Pictures logo - these late 80s recollections move the character further away from the grumpy default first seen in Rob Cohen's The Fast and the Furious, conjuring up a self-consciously mythic backstory involving the bone-deep pain of familial betrayal and a circuit race track straight out of Tony Scott's Days of Thunder. It's notable that the adult Diesel only passes through those moments, observing and reconfiguring them from a detached, third-person, perspective. The actor-producer isn't de-aged or otherwise given a computer generated makeover either. Instead, the task of extracting emotional vulnerability from such a knowingly gruff character is entrusted to Vinnie Bennett, an actor from New Zealand.

Bennett's Dominic - as well as the milieu he inhabits - are a softer, more human alternative to the state-of-the-art noise around them. Viewed in the totality of Justin Lin's film they are, at least initially, a necessary diversion; textural information spliced into the rigidly digital F9, designed to make sense of John Cena's character - a dark reflection for Dom, foisted on the series ten laps deep. This ungainliness is all over F9, a sequel that seems more concerned with re-stablishing a status quo for further instalments than moving any of these characters in exciting directions right now. To wit, Dwayne Johnson's uneasy ally is replaced by a different, but no less musclebound, WWE wrestler while the death of Sung Kang's Han is rewritten yet again, this time to put his easy-going charm back in an operations room that has, understandably, skewed morose since Paul Walker's real life death. As Lin's film heads deeper and deeper into the tech-babble and empty posturing required to prop up yet-another mind-numbing treasure hunt, the appeal of the NWA scored flashbacks only grows. The seething simplicity of two teenage petrolheads squabbling over the memory of their father - each armed with a distinctly different account of Toretto Sr. - plays sincere by comparison. 

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

Strangely, Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw's best moments have little to do with either Dwayne Johnson or Jason Statham. Although the couple's bickering helped prop up the series' first post-Paul Walker instalment, the recriminations struggle to engage when scaled up to power an entire film. Part of the problem is the lack of venom, the insults flying back-and-forth between Johnson and Statham just aren't mean enough. The jibes momentarily amuse but are, ultimately, forgettable. There's very little sense the two action stars are actually trying to upset each other or leave a permanent, brand altering read in the audience's mind. The Rock cuts his usual promos, telling you how great he is, while Statham babbles around, threatening to grumble his way towards the effing-and-jeffing seen in Spy. He never quite gets there.

Pinned up in a garage, and glimpsed towards the end of Hobbs & Shaw, is the poster for Walter Hill's 48 Hrs, the high water mark for squabbling, buddy-buddy action films. I have no idea why you'd invite such a withering comparison. Neither star is as funny as Nick Nolte, never mind Eddie Murphy. Mechanically, Hobbs & Shaw reaches for comedy as a salve, a way to force scenes through the exposition and down-time notes that basic plotting requires they hit. Since the two top-billed stars are to be protected from real, lingering abuse, ringers are drafted to soak up the punishment: Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds are parachuted in to churn through their usual shtick, here interpreted as creepy hero worship of The Rock and his throbbing musculature.

These massive, punishing cameos recall the distended bloat felt in Sammo Hung's 1980s action comedies, proving once again that Hong Kong was way ahead of the curve when it came to populist garbage. What the film does have though are Vanessa Kirby as Statham's little SIS Hattie and Idris Elba as a fascist, cyborg Superman named Brixton Lore. Hattie is relentlessly imperilled and pumped full of the apocalypse drugs that every party is champing at the bit for. Happily, the character isn't then relegated to a passive possession to be fought over. In terms of genuine physicality, Hattie is actually the highlight. Kirby and her stunt doubles Lucy Cork, Elizabeth Donker Curtius and Laura Swift combine to deliver a tucked, tumbling performance that peaks with a delirious skip across shipping containers while a Soviet era power station collapses around everyone's ears.

As well as the usual swaggering machismo from the permanently brilliant Elba, the actor also provides a focus point in the film's most impossible special effects sequences. Brixton, working for tech-focused doomsday preppers, is the human component for a mutating murder-cycle that can twist and turn around Lore's body, squeezing the augmented man through a variety of shrinking, otherwise calamitous, gaps. Although completely out of place in a franchise about drag racing, Corona chugging chodes, Brixton and his super-duper-bike do neatly combine the thrill felt when viewing the incomparable opening credits of TV's Street Hawk with a Japanese, piloted mech aesthetic. You now, the clanking cauldron that birthed, and later bled into, the Transformers toyline. Since Hasbro's film series is still actively avoiding this kind of biomechanical symbioses, Hobbs & Shaw's human missile will have to do.

Fast & Furious 8

Given how much of Fast & Furious 8's ad campaign is dedicated to telling us that Vin Diesel's character has done the unthinkable and betrayed his family, it's natural to wonder if Universal are testing the waters to see if the franchise can survive without its gravely voiced linchpin. A villainous role specifically isolates him from the pack, inviting the idea that, ultimately, Dominic Toretto is disposable. Couple that with the star's very public falling out with guaranteed draw The Rock (not to mention a bigger part for Jason Statham) and the deck looks to be pointedly stacked against Big Vin.

On the night Furious 8 is, if anything, the inverse of that idea. In F Gary Gray's entry Toretto is a folk hero, drawing out the innate goodness in men that have found themselves morally muddled. His goodness is the kind of bright, shining light you'd find in romantic myth; Toretto is at once a brooding Arthurian King, dealing with threats to his very identity, and the kind of innately decent, plain speaking warrior found on the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump. Furious 8 makes the case that Diesel is actually essential to the franchise. Without him and his puppy dog enthusiasm, the extended family motif plays like an artificial, focus tested organisation of cheap TV stars and ex-rappers.

Vin Diesel's old fashioned star power aside, Statham finally gets to deliver on the promise of Fast & Furious 6's credits stinger, cutting promos on an equally excited Dwayne Johnson before performing his own hyperkinetic take on Hard-Boiled's poster moment. Furious 8 also turns in a stunningly executed centrepiece collision that gives Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines' hijacked car idea a modern, self-driven spin. It's a Luddite's worst nightmare: hundreds of autonomous vehicles speeding towards a pile-up so wonderfully, deliriously excessive that its closest visual antecedent is that ill-advised moment Terry Funk and Cactus Jack implored a bloodthirsty ECW crowd to throw them a chair.

Fast & Furious 7

In the context of Fast & Furious 7, Han (Sung Kang)'s immolation in Furious 6's post-credit stinger - itself a holdover from the otherwise rootless The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift - becomes a rough shift. Furious 7 isn't the film Jason Statham's sudden, violent appearance seemed to anticipate. He's not an imported action slasher here to downsize Dominic Toretto's extended family, instead he's a perpetual annoyance in the Wile E Coyote mode. Whether director James Wan and screenwriter Chris Morgan's sequel was always meant to be like this isn't clear. Perhaps everyone just lost their taste for brutality after Paul Walker's untimely passing? Furious 7 doesn't even attempt to be apocalyptic. It's uplifting and celebratory - safe even.

Danger in Wan's film is subverted at every turn by zero injury, last minute rescues and a CG aesthetic that reads as intentionally cartoonish. Furious 7 is reassuring then. We don't dwell on harm, everyone is immediately dusted off and dressed up for the next speeding encounter. It's a dream of invincibility. In Furious 7's last moments Vin Diesel transcends the Toretto character to speak directly to the audience about his friend Paul Walker. It's brilliant and silly, a genuinely touching epitaph from a man who fills his social media full of schmaltzy image macros. Wan honours Walker by hinting at an untapped potential for close-quarters struggle. The director pairs his departed star with Tony Jaa's elbows and knees for recurring bouts of fisticuffs. Their brief dust-ups are the film's best angles, full of energy and, most importantly, invention. Obviously Walker can't match Jaa's Kinamotay assaults, but he does look good soaking up the damage.

ROCK BOTTOM

A longer international trailer for Furious 7 with added Kurt Russell and Attitude Era wrestling moves.

SUPER BOWL SPOTS - Furious 7

Horror mogul James Wan keeps Vin Diesel's vest franchise ticking over with Jason Statham and CG devastation. Presumably, considering everyone is decked out in evening wear, Furious 7 is going to focus on the gang hobnobbing and beating up rich people? Really Furious 7 and its predecessors represent the most successful updating of the A-Team formula - easily digestible, chummy archetypes and their endlessly customised vehicles against the world. Plus, what's more exciting than the insinuation that Statham's underslung grenade launcher actually helped propel Big Vin to safety instead of blowing him up? Statham needs to learn Fast Physics.

Fast & Furious 6

Six films deep and the filmmakers have finally given Michelle Rodriguez something lively to do. Fast & Furious 6 is a continuity critical mass, roping in even more fringe players for a sprawling super-narrative that functions as both a prequel and a sequel. If Fast Five was the Avengers Assemble of the series, then Fast Six is more like a hyper-aware fight manga in which death has ceased to have any meaning. Resurrected as an amnesiac in the thrall of a grinning SAS dick, Rodriguez's Letty must chose between a robotic rugger bugger and Vin Diesel's pristine, vest wearing superman. Not content to just put frowny Rodriguez over as a plot linchpin, the production even hires smiley Gina Carano for some credible girl fighting. Fast Six is film as pure iteration, smoothing out the stumbling points of past entries to arrive at an expertly juggled example of popcorn nonsense.

Fast Five

By virtue of putting out sequels regardless of whether or not the original stars can be tempted back, The Fast and The Furious franchise arrives at its own de facto The Avengers. Fast Five brings back every major-ish character (Devon Aoki's Suki excepted) for a rat-pack heist set in Rio. Charisma holes are plugged by The Rock, playing a perpetually sweating federal agent tasked with taking Vin Diesel's crew out / developing a crush on them. Fast Five represents a series thoroughly mutated from off-season slate filler to full-blown summer tent-pole. The pocket change CG tunnels of the previous film are gone, replaced with a billion dollar central set-piece involving a bank vault being hurled along peopled streets. It's Michael Bay's casual contempt for human life, filtered back through a teatime TV morality that sees terminated cops repeatedly identified as corrupt. One or two Dwayne Johnson scenes short of being very good, Fast Five is the best the series has been since the first film.

Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious peaks incredibly early with a hero shot of Vin Diesel glowering in front of the clattering, repetitive machinery of a Californian oil field. It's a framing that seems to be deliberately evoking the star's ridiculous / incredible name, as well as his first act calibration as an unhinged, Schwarzenegger style robot. 4 Fast begins as an equaliser vehicle for Vin, allowing him to bounce people around garages then dangle them out of windows. Location and incident both initially stress that other LA set muscle bomber Commando. Unfortunately this doesn't last. 4 Fast quickly settles down into a zero intrigue identity thriller with both Diesel and Paul Walker pretending to not quite be who they say they are. A little too self-impressed with having got the main players back in the same film, 4 Fast stumbles and bores.

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift

A return to form for the franchise. The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift one ups the white guy acceptance fantasy of the original film by placing the hero in a setting where he can definitively be considered other. Stranded in Tokyo with his disinterested Dad, Lucas Black's Sean even gets to be discriminated against racially - surely a dream of sorts for the kind of flyover Caucasian who strains for any kind of exotic affectation? 3 Fast borrows heavily from Japanese pop culture products like Initial D, emphasising a weaving street race style rather than the drag strip histrionics of the first two films. Director Justin Lin shoots his actors straining to keep control of their cars, using swirling computer effects to stress Japan's dangerous, densely populated streets. A massive improvement on the Hot Wheels unreality of the previous Fast.

2 Fast 2 Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious has more in common with the Police Academy movies than its immediate ancestor. It's an artless, glass house sequel that trades in the faintly believable car culture of the first film for the beer bloat of spring break. Rob Cohen was able to give The Fast and The Furious a kind of grimy verisimilitude, suggesting a vibrant car crash scene centred around teenage rep. Armed with twice the budget, John Singelton struggles to make 2 Fast look like it wasn't shot for TV. Paul Walker once again plays the worst cop in the universe, this time recruited to spearhead another chummy undercover initiative. Joining him is Tyrese as a childhood friend with a chip on his shoulder. The duo spend the entire movie bickering like an elderly couple. There's an idea that Tyrese is supposed to represent the audience, chiming in to undercut Walker's bland heroics. In reality the snide asides are closer to the bitter recriminations of a spurned lover.

The Fast and The Furious

The Fast and the Furious is a fad culture magazine article come to life; Saturday Night Fever for petrolheads. Paul Walker plays a dweeby undercover cop scrambling to get an in with Vin Diesel's cool crime gang by making a series of incompetent racing gestures. Although working with a similar framework as Point Break, the identity lines never get quite so blurred. For a start there's never any real sense that Walker's cop gives much of a shit about enforcing the law. Instead he's a skate-punk white kid there to brush shoulders with a minority dominated subculture. Enlivened by a series of car clashes that stress personal danger as much as speed, First Fast is ultimately a high school idea of reality - there is no authority greater than the guy you deify.