‘Fast X’ – Momoa shines as ‘Fast and Furious’ hits brakes on logic

As the Fast and Furious Saga careens towards its finish line, it seems to be getting nostalgic. Beginning with a flashback to the grand old days of 2011, Fast X sets the stage for its revenge ridden ride with a look at the series’ best days past. Vin Diesel’s Domonic Toretto towing a bank vault through the streets of Rio with help from his partner in crime, the late Paul Walker’s Brian. Unbeknownst to the duo, the mayhem of that day sowed the seeds of discontent, and they’ve been reaped in the form of the villainous and vengeful Dante played by Jason Momoa.

With his enigmatic charisma laden performance, Jason Momoa saves Fast X from being a befuddling banal bore. Make no mistake, the over the top action you’ve come to expect from the franchise exists, but the stakes have never been lower. It’s not even about the mortality of the characters. They’ve all had at least ten years of invincibility, especially those who have died and returned to the land of the living. No, where Fast X invites disbelief is how shoddy their action sequences play out.

The spectacles are a noisy disconnected series of senseless events. In one scene, in a moment of heroism, Dominic Toretto props up his car on two wheels, shielding nearby civilians from being engulfed in flames. The hows and whys are irrelevant to this film, as never before has the bond between man and machine been personified, not even in films where the cars transform into people.

Truly, Fast X feels like the result of an eight-year-old child banging together his hot wheels, making up a loosely threaded narrative as he goes along, slipping in lines he heard in better action films.

Once you accept that, once you’re able to take yourself out of the world of reality completely, you may be able to enjoy Fast X. It helps that the the films continue to hint towards self awareness, with a recap of the impossible stunts the Fast and Furious crew have pulled off with nothing but a half a tank of gas and a whole lot of faith.

The most grating part is when the movie has the audacity to ask you to take it seriously, as if it didn’t just commit several bewildering acts of nonsense with reckless abandon. To that end I deny the film the serious treatment it requests. Instead, I’ll embrace it for what it is, the laughs it gave me along the way, and reflect on the dizzying fever dream that was this franchise’s assault on logic of the past 12 years when it all comes to an end.

Rating: Half Price

Damian Levy is a film critic and podcaster for Damian Michael Movies