Rated: PG-13

Action/Adventure

2 hr 25 min

Rating: 6/10

Ever since Universal Pictures launched the Fast and Furious movie franchise in 2001 with its first movie “The Fast and the Furious,” it has become one of the largest franchises of all time, with its gross revenue exceeding 6 billion dollars. What started off as a series focused on street racing, stealing DVD players in Los Angeles, and taking down drug lords and crime bosses, quickly evolved into being a trilogy crossover consisting of “Mission Impossible,” “James Bond” and the MCU’s “Avengers.

This is no different for “Fast and Furious 9” or F9, which is the ninth installment of the Fast and Furious movies (not including “Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw” (2019)) that takes the franchise to new heights not seen in the previous movies.

In this film, street racer and mechanic Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) along with his wife Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), get the rest of Dom’s family back together (which consist of Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Ludacris), Ramsey (Natalie Emmanuel), Han Lue (Sung Kang), Mia Torreto (Jordana Brewster), Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), Twinkie (Bow Wow), Earl Hu (Jason Tobin), and Elle (Anna Sawai)) to stop Dom’s younger brother Jakob (John Cena) and cyberterrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron) from using a weapons device known as Project Ares from controlling the world’s computer weapon systems and using them for their own threatening purposes.

The movie is entertaining  to watch with its over the top action of chases and stunts, complementary  soundtrack, team chemistry amongst Dom’s ever-growing family, comical interludes, including some good callbacks from the previous movies and an empowering message of the importance of family.

Despite all these positive highlights, the film is slightly above average due to some cringy writing and no stakes were involved and how certain characters could have been utilized in more meaningful ways. One example of this is, Dom’s brother is still somewhat hard to connect with as being part of the family, certain moments of the movie added little to no significance to the overall plot and could have been edited or cut out entirely. There were also some moments within the film that were left unexplored or not explained in the best ways.

Most of the elements that make up this movie is on full display within the first 10 minutes alone as we have Dom and Letty surviving a “Tarzan” car swing, Roman barely escapes from a mine explosion and from being crushed upon by another car, Roman along with Tej and Ramsey survive driving through a bridge that is clearly not fit to carry the weight of their car along with so much more.

At this point, it is more than fair to say that Dom’s crew have proven themselves to be invincible as they seem to dodge death or serious injury quite frequently. Although Roman points this out throughout certain moments in the film, it still doesn’t make up for the film’s flaws.

If “F9” put as much effort into making a flawless story as they do with making realistic over the top action sequences, this film could have easily earned a much higher rating and rewarding payoff.

With that said, this is still a highly recommendable movie if seen with the right mindset of watching an entertaining  yet ridiculous over the top action movie.

Fast and Furious 9 is in theaters now. To check out some behind the scenes footage of F9, click here.