F9

I seriously thought that creative happiness would end here. That it simply wouldn't be possible to jump so many sharks in order for the action-packed and family-oriented elements to fit together this time. But they fit. Though the opening chase scene needs to be watched with increased tolerance and the complete finale is a somewhat puffed-up spitting in the face of the haters, the rest almost enchanted me. The thousand times chewed-over phrases work in Vin Diesel's performance this time as well and the combination with John Cena as the Terminator really hit the mark. Memories of the twenty-year-old original, a brief visit to a forgotten sliding off-ramp, emotional winks at characters who are no longer in the plot – it all works. For die-hard fans, this (hopefully) is a fireworks display of joy. A cheesier mood than ever before, but the same level of popcorn adrenaline applies. (07/01/2021)

Unfortunately, it falls back into the style of the completely useless episodes 2, 3 and 4 from the last decade, with bland characters and a ton of unnecessary action with incredibly bad effects. 15 years ago, I could still understand it, they were light action B-movies that lacked a budget, but you went to see cars, not monstrous high-budget set pieces. But here it is hard to understand, because over time the FF franchise has become a billion dollar colossus, so money is not an issue. Yet the result is astonishingly bad and it is questionable whether to continue at all and, if so, in what direction to take it further. Basically, everything is bad and nothing works. If the few highlight scenes were glued together, i.e. the ones where the classic practical effects work and there's no crazy CGI going on, plus 2 or 3 lines from a proven black duo, it would be 20 minutes long and mission accomplished. Unfortunately, even John Cena is more charismatic and fun than Vin Diesel. Big disappointment. (08/01/2021)

The F&F franchise has one exceptional quality, and that is that it is capable of raising scenes to such heights of comicality with every episode that you wouldn't believe it. And Fast & Furious 9, from the very first minutes, is built up ad absurdum. Here we have, over and over again, flying cars, exploding cars, motorbikes, quad bikes and basically everything one can think of, technology that could not exist even in the best sci-fi movies, and on top of that his teletubbies crew, which is again the same cast, so at least I give extra points for that, because it has grown on me over the episodes. Plot-wise, though, it's still the same song. The same, unentertaining and as I mentioned here almost comical stuff. People flying through the air, a car getting intercepted by a fighter jet in flight and taking off with it, bad guys jumping from motorcycle to motorcycle, and cars driving on a vertically dropped rope bridge. Thank you, I don't want to. I was kind of naively hoping that in 8 episodes they would learn their lesson and, judging by the audience response, figure they could cut back a bit, but probably in vain. Audiences here go for action, but in the best case they will leave laughing and feeling that there are stupider people than them (=the creators), in the worst case they will turn it off after 20 minutes and pretend that this film never worked. Having John Cena in the cast might have already sounded the alarm that it's probably going to be a mess... 1 star for the "Dom and family" memes, which would never have happened without the movie. (08/02/2021)

Fast and Furious is a really interesting franchise that divides people into maybe three camps. The first group stopped watching after episodes 3 or 4, the second group started watching after episode 5 (for example me), and the third group watched the whole thing and either enjoy it or hate it as much as possible. I personally don't care much for cars, so I wasn't interested in the first episodes and only started to care when The Rock and other cast members came on the scene and, instead of racing, it went to over the top action and I have to say that I managed to enjoy all the episodes from 5 onwards. They're silly and fun movies with action I probably wouldn't see anywhere else and they have featured a lot of well known martial arts stars, so I definitely can't complain about that. I was curious about the 9th episode and it's without a doubt the weakest since the 5th. I feel like there's less of everything than I'm used to. For one thing, The Rock and Jason Statham are missing, and their absence is very noticeable. They’ve added John Cena and he is surprisingly the best thing about the whole movie, but it's not enough. Roman makes jokes less than usual, there are few personal fights, and even the over-the-top action is less for my taste (the truck caught my attention). On the other hand, the journey into space is uninteresting. There are no interesting locations, even the pretty women are gone, and there's more bullshit about family than in maybe three episodes combined. At least the music is still good, it brought some decent summer songs. I wasn't bored, it went relatively well, but it's a quality downgrade even for people who liked the previous episodes. Story 2/5, Action 3/5, Humor 3/5, Violence NO, Fun 4/5 Music 4/5, Visuals 4/5, Atmosphere 2/5, Suspense 2/5 5.5/10. (07/03/2021)

In these times of 'black darkness' I was excited about Vin Diesel, he seemed like a cool action guy and I was looking forward to his next films. But today, with Diesel's ego swollen to the size of his calf's neck, I'm just bored. And if I had a nickel for every time this film breaks the laws of physics, or they say "brother", "sister", "father", "mother" or "family", I'd buy an island in the Caribbean. Or a flat in Prague. (08/01/2021)