Fast X

If there is one thing i have learned about Hollywood is that cash means everything. Whenever you can make money, it doesn´t matter if you repeat yourself just to make lot´s of cash. Don´t worry about the plot as long as tickets are selling. Just look at different franchises out there and you will see what i mean. We have movie franchises that have been going on for so long that it never seems to end. 2 perfect examples of that is the Halloween franchise that they said would end with Halloween Ends last year. I am not sure i believe that completely if im being honest. At some point it feels like they will find another way to bring Michael Myers back, and Halloween Ends was just a cash in to get money from fans. Speaking of franchises you also have the very popular The Fast And The Furious franchise, that have been around for over 10 years. I can honestly say that when the first film came out in 2001, i never would have imagined that there would be a franchise with this many movies. I did see the first film in cinema back in 2001 with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker and at the time i didn´t mind the film for what it was, a simple car action film. The sequels that followed pretty much felt like the same film but with a higher budget and much more action sequences. I actually never went to see any of the four Fast & Furious sequels in cinema after the first one and watch most of them on DVD or Blu Ray, i simply didn´t feel interested in seeing them on the big screen. Except for the 5th film in the series called Fast & Furious 5 released in 2011. At the time i wanted to see that film in cinema simply because i was a fan of Dwayne Johnson. Until this day it is still my favourite film in this franchise and actually the only film i have rewatched in the Fast & Furious collection. Vin Diesel have since then continued to play his character Dominic Toretto, and i still feel that The Last Witch Hunter is his best film so far ( i am still hoping for a sequel ). To be honest the films that have followed after the fifth Fast & Furious film have been very mehcanical action films with not much else to offer. And the 9th film with Fast & Furious in space, who came up with that idea? So when Fast X ( Fast & Furious 10 ) came out on digital i decided to give it a chance. Is this the best film in the franchise so far or should this franchise have been stopped many years ago?

Dominic Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) and his team are requested by the Agency to steal a computer chip during it´s transit in Rome, Italy. What Dominic doesn´t know is that he and his team are being set up, where the son Hernan Reyes ( Jason Momoa ) of drug lord Hernan Reyes ( Joaquim de Almeida ) use them to target Dominic for killing his father, to make sure he revenge his fathers´s death. 

I have actually never reviewed any of the Fast & Furious films so far over the years on this blog, and maybe one reason was because i felt that how do you review films such as these when you know it´s mostly about driving cars and using violence in every film? Either way, i thought i might as well give it a shot with Fast X just in case fans of this franchise would be interested to hear my opinions. Knowing the history from the previous films and what has happened along the way, if you are a fan of the past of this franchise you might actually enjoy Fast X for what it is. This is exactly what you might have expected, where you get lots of car chases, explosions, guns and of course physical violence as well. For someone like myself who feel that they could have ended this franchise at the 7th film i can´t really say that Fast X bring a lot of surprises to me. Let us begin and talk about what works in Fast X and i have to say actor Jason Momoa as the character Dante Reyes give this franchise a fresh breath of air. Not only is Jason entertaining in this role but i do enjoy ( some ) of his action scenes as well. Jason Statham is back as Deckhard Shaw and you know you can´t deny that Statham have a charming screen presence. He doesn´t even have to try very hard, he just got something special in almost every film that he does. There are a few action scenes that are at least a bit more entertaining than in the 9th film, especially one scene that seems inspired by the Indiana Jones classic Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Ok, so we have to get into some of the problems. First of all the character of Vin Diesel known as Dominic Toretto and after 9 movies in the past with this character i just don´t really care about him anymore. If a car would have blown up in this film and his character would have died, i probably wouldn´t be sad to be honest. I think his character have been going on far too long in this franchise. I know these films have a lot of Vin Diesel fans and i don´t mind him as an actor, but if you are going to be in 10 films of a franchise and don´t do anything interesting with your character, then you can´t expect me to stay interested. Some of the action scenes doesn´t feel very fresh or entertaning, maybe because all of these sequels have used most of the ideas and it´s gettting harder to find some unexpected surprises. What about the other actors? Most of them are ok i suppose especially in the action scenes. Overall, i just feel like Fast X didn´t do that much for this franchise to move forward. It just feels like a sequel that reminds us of so many other Fast & Furious films. Director Louis Leterrier ( director of the fun action films Transporter & Transporter 2 with Jason Statham ) isn´t a terrible action director, but there is something missing in this sequel that we would have needed to make it more powerful than some of the previous sequels. Fast X will most likely be enjoyed by fans of this franchise, i just personally feel like im done with these films. Take my advice Vin Diesel and work on The Last Witch Hunter 2 instead, and i guarantee i will have more fun with that sequel than i had with Fast X.

Rating: DD