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My journey with the Fast & Furious saga started a little over halfway through, as detailed in a lengthy piece I wrote at the time entitled I TRY NOT TO BE SNOOTY ABOUT FILMS, PART 1: FAST & FURIOUS 6 (you can read it here). Incidentally, it was followed by another post called I TRY NOT TO BE SNOOTY ABOUT FILMS, PART 2: GROWN UPS which essentially ran to the following six words: ‘I managed fifteen minutes, it’s excruciating’.

This short run series of reviews (there was no part three) may have garnered mixed results then but it did get me hooked on these totally ridiculous but utterly charming action movies. There have been ups and downs along the way for us Fast & Furious fans (I have now seen all of them) but since the fourth one they have pretty consistently been undemanding fun with their mix of endearingly cliched characterisation and properly audacious car chases. There is an argument that each film has got progressively worse since the franchise pinnacle of 2011’s Fast 5 (the inclusion of the word ‘furious’, or indeed ‘fast’, in these titles actually seems to be entirely the choice of whoever is making the films, or possibly even the posters, at any given time). There is no denying that this latest bucks that trend though. It is a really enjoyable time at the cinema and after a couple of more mediocre movies things are definitely back on the right road.

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One of the things that lifted Fast 5 (or Fast & Furious 5, or FF5 or whatever it was called) was the casting, with immense charisma machine Dwayne Johnson joining the newly established line up. (The inclusion of various characters in the first three was all over the place with people coming in and out like it was the lift in a department store but it had settled down by number four.) Johnson has since left the series but they have tried a similar move with other actors joining at key points. Sometimes this has worked as with Jason Statham doing a couple, other times less so as with Charlize Theron coming on board, and in the case of Fast & Furious 9 it wasn’t successful at all when they just didn’t know what to do with John Cena. They are playing this same game again here and this time they have nailed it. Jason Mamoa is great in this film. After seeing Mamoa channel Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in Netflix’s Slumberland, the actor has now found himself his own character that lands with equivalent impact. His bad guy Dante has been compared to Heath Ledger’s Joker, which might be fair if Heath Ledger had been in Violent Night rather than The Dark Knight but the nature of the movie notwithstanding he does bring an energy, twisted humour and unpredictable volatility that explodes off the screen in a similar way.

Brie Larson has also been cast in a supporting role here, or at least her wryness and eyebrow raising has – it’s a bit like she is doing an impression of herself – and all one hundred of the regular returning players are back too. The best news in this respect is that they do know what to do with John Cena this time, although I’m not sure he’s not playing a totally different person. Last time it turned out Vin Diesel’s Dom had a brother but this time it appears that guy may have actually been one of two identical twins.

In terms of actors that are missed, there is still a painful lack of Paul Walker’s Brian and the need to explain why he is out of the action and missing from the barbecues has once again lead to the marginalisation of Jordana Brewster as his on screen wife Mia. We may not have known it before but Brian was the perfect character to bring measure to the gravelly pomposity of Diesel’s protagonist and these films definitely suffer without him.

I don’t wish to say too much about the plot because there isn’t too much of one, but events lead them to Rome where the narrative joyously and callously uses the city as its playground; kicking a ball around and leaving a big mess. The main concern of the story still seems to be to never show anyone’s dead body because, well you never know… and the script once again sounds like it was constructed by smashing up a load of fortune cookies and taping together the messages found inside. It does poke fun at itself though, in this case most obviously around the previous movies little sojourn into space and it’s hard not to go along with it all. At one point there is a DeLorean in the film but they’ve not resorted to including time travel yet.

So, I’m glad that my desire to check out this previously unexplored corner of cinema lead me here all that time ago. I’ve never failed to enjoy these movies and this one has got me quite excited about the one or two more they’ve said they’ll make. That will certainly be time to finish but until then this continues to be a great ride.

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The Ripley Factor:

This is a series that has always featured strong and capable female characters. Mia is not the only one that feels a tiny bit sidelined here but actually so do several of the men. Michelle Rodriquez gets to fight another woman, which seems to be something that is in her contract for every one of these she makes, but she also gets to do the coolest thing anyone has done on a motorbike since Christian Bale drove his Batpod up the wall. It was a shame Helen Mirren’s Queenie is set up to be rescued (that’s not really a spoiler) and I was disappointed with Larson’s final moments but I expected she’ll be back to kick butt. It is also nice to find that this family they’ve been going on about for over two decades now has a matriarch at the top.