Directed by Justin Lin
Written by Daniel Casey, Justin Lin
Starring Vin Diesel, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Sung Kang, Nathalie Emmanuel, Helen Mirren, etc.
Running time 2 hours, 23 minutes
MPAA rated PG-13 "for sequences of violence and action, and language"
In theaters June 25

by Hunter Bush, Staff Writer

They let Helen Mirren drive! THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN FULFILLED!

Hi. I'm Hunter, a late-in-life convert to the world of The Fast & The Furious. Back in 2001, I was a young man trying to define myself; to figure out who I am. Not an uncommon situation, but I was going about it all wrong. Instead of trying any- and everything, I was carefully limiting what I exposed myself to; instead of joining a group of my friends who were going to see the first Fast & Furious, to see if I would like it, I declined because "What if I DID like it? Would I have to become a Car Guy? Etc., etc." Silly, teenage stuff.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have loved it. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly effective car racing-based actioner and it gets more rewarding when you've seen more of the franchise, but it wouldn't have blown back the thick & luxurious, multicolored hair of 18-year-old me. A few years later, however, I similarly turned down an invite to see Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift in theaters with roughly that same group of friends, under the reasonable and defensible ground that I hadn't seen the first two. A self-fulfilling prophecy that assured I would miss what is one of my favorite installments on the series.

I had unknowingly done myself a terrible disservice.

Tokyo Drift flippin' rules! As a film, it's the first in the Fast Franchise to start to lean on the wall a little bit; to push the tonal boundaries that would otherwise have (probably - this is all speculation) found the franchise becoming another Direct To Video staple. You'd catch one of the first Fast & Furiouses on TV, wonder what happened to that series, and end up down a Wikipedia rabbit hole where you found out that the 11th one was released a year ago and starred some "Really? Him?" -level celebrity like Joe Rogan or something (shudder to think).

As I said, this is all speculative, but it's an educated guess based on my lifetime watching flicks. The first one comes out, does well, gets a sequel (from a notable director - R.I.P. John Singleton) but the sequel doesn't have a LOT to do with the first one. It's a thematic sequel, tied to the original by one actor (R.I.P. Paul Walker) and a word cloud of nebulous concepts such as "cars", "undercover cop", and "crime". It also does well and gets a sequel: Tokyo Drift. And that's where Justin Lin comes in (he's the director for F9, which is why I'm taking this walk - be patient).

Tokyo Drift has, ostensibly, nothing to do with the previous two installments besides similarly nebulous conceptual ties (until it does) but it's just the shot in the arm the franchise needed. As I said, it plays with the tone, adding a heightened melodrama, stylish direction, larger than life characters and tons of amazing car action that usually ends in equally amazing destruction! There were car stunts and crashes in the previous flicks, but never so lovingly depicted. Y'know how people used to use the phrase "food porn" to describe sumptuously-photographed pictures of your dinner? Well this would be "car crash porn" if that wasn't already the concept for a Cronenberg movie. There's just something so satisfying in watching these gorgeously designed and decorated cars turn into modern art sculpture and then burst into flames.

Lin took over directing duties on the next 3 Fasts & Furiouses, including Fast Five (the fifth one, obvs) which is probably still my favorite because it is THE true turning point for the franchise. Fast Five is the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door from her sepia farmhouse into the technicolor spectacle of Oz; when the franchise goes from a reasonably straight vehicular action series to being a Saturday morning cartoon. All it takes is one vault heist. Do you remember the moment in Speed when they manage to jump a city bus over the gap in an incomplete highway and you're just kind of like "Sure" because you're so invested and also you're just having too much fun to care? The vault heist in Fast Five is like that, but for about 20 minutes. The laws of realistic physics stop applying (though the sequence is pretty much entirely achieved through practical effects) and you're left with Pure Cinema. Something is happening that I know intellectually to be impossible to the point of comedy but not only do I believe my eyes, but I actually care about it all. Like I said: Pure Cinema.

After that, the franchise is fully a Saturday morning cartoon (specifically M.A.S.K.) but with more unironic heart than almost any other franchise I can think of. Not just of the "from one character to another character" variety either. The folks making these movies want us to enjoy them! They want us to cheer and clap when our favorite characters show up, and to get teary eyed when we think they might not make it, and then to cheer and clap through teary eyes when they do! In a world where talking about Star Wars around the dinner table is quickly getting to be just as verboten a topic as religion or politics, it's nice to have a franchise clap a hand on your shoulder and welcome you with a tall cool (franchise staple) Corona, y'know?

How much you, personally, will enjoy F9 depends on which side of that sepia farmhouse door you like your movies on. And unlike the Star Wars conversation, there are no wrong answers. If you're looking purely for car racing and realistic vehicular action though, you're going to be disappointed. The Fasts & Furiouses have long been flirting with what I think of as Car Superpowers: not only the ability to make cars do things that are highly unlikely (which happens) and not just having them do things that seem downright impossible (lotta that) but also to manipulate the cars as though they were an extension of themselves. Case in point: in more than one of these movies, Dom (Vin Diesel) will "catch" someone with his car. They will fall, say, 70 feet but rather than hitting the hard concrete, they land on a nice, soft car. And we are to believe this is *better* and, y'know what? It is. Or at least: I do.

If you're someone who is on board with all the craziness of the recent sequels - the big action set pieces and such - F9 has them in bunches. If you've seen a trailer or two, you've got a decent idea of what's coming: explosive chase sequences, dangerous and hilarious fun with industrial strength electromagnets, some kinda enormous un-explodable military transport, etc. but seeing it all executed is tremendous fun.

F9 is subtitled "The Fast Saga" and while it would be obvious to say that this film is about "Fambly" - because they're all about "Fambly" - this is still the one most concerned with the concept of legacy. It's also the most flashback-heavy installment and while that necessitates the scenes set in the here & now be a bit exposition heavy at first, eventually things settle into just being an amusement park ride. Will you go into this thinking that it's faintly ridiculous that Dom has NEVER mentioned having a brother Jakob (John Cena) before? Maybe, but once you're in these flashbacks, seeing how things played out, you'll at least somewhat buy the logic of why he's never been brought up. Of course, that's the point, but it's really well done.

During the lockdown, my house watched all the Fast & Furious films, finishing up with the Hobbs & Shaw spin-off and Fast 8: The F8 of the Furious in May of this year, so all these things are quite fresh in my mind. So when we see young Dom (Vinnie Bennett) straight out of jail, setting himself on the path to becoming the champion street racer from the first film, I noticed that the handful of kids standing behind him looked a lot like Letty, Mia, Jesse and Vince, his crew from that first flick. But there's no ham-handed close-ups of them, no dialogue exchanged between them, none of that hokey shit that most other franchises wouldn't be able to restrain themselves from doing.

Restraint is an odd thing to be talking about in regards to F9, a film where Vin Diesel rights an overturned truck as it rolls down a hill using controlled explosions; where smashing your car bodily into the side of a mountain and rolling 30 times is not only the preferred scenario, but a totally fine and survivable thing to do; where Roman (Tyrese) posits that he and the entirety of the crew are in fact immortals because of the things they have survived, but here I am. That restraint is so unusual and so refreshing. It really feels as though not only is the franchise in good hands with Justin Lin but that Lin respects the fans enough NOT to do that kind of thing.

That thing I said at the start about Helen Mirren getting to drive? That happened because she was very vocal about wanting to drive a car in one of these flicks and thus the fans wanted that for her. So Lin & co. delivered. But if you just give fans what they think they want without really caring about it, it's pandering and feels hollow when you watch the movie. Like seeing a kid in a supermarket throw a tantrum because they want a candy bar until the exhausted parent doesn't care anymore and there's just some red faced tot with tears running down their face and a chocolate bar jammed in their maw. Justin Lin (as well as co-screenwriter Daniel Casey) want the same things as the fans. They want Helen Mirren to drive; they want that kid to have that candy bar.

At the end of a long day, after all the dumb adult responsibilities are out of the way, we all deserve a treat. It could be a candy bar, or a Corona, or two hours spent with a bunch of goofballs and badasses in nitro burning funny cars, saving the world and celebrating with a BBQ.