cena evil
DIESEL-POWERED SEQUEL PUTS FAST BACK IN FIFTH GEAR…
UNIVERSAL
FAST & FURIOUS 9 12A
FILM ★★★☆☆
OUT NOW CINEMAS
Things
change,” growls Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto during the opening moments of this long-awaited, nitro-fuelled Fast sequel. Technically, he’s referring to the serene life he and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) have reluctantly embraced in order to raise their young son, Brian. But he could be talking about the newly minted ‘Fast Saga’ itself, which has run the gamut from down-and-dirty street racer, through globetrotting heist movie, to a mongrel genre it has now improbably pioneered – the bombastic, melodramatic, ensemble gearhead spy thriller.
Of course, this scarcely scratches the surface of everything going on in the near two-and-a-half-hour F9, which marks director Justin Lin’s return to family filmmaking following a twomovie pit-stop. Lin has nothing left to prove after helming cult favourite Tokyo Drift and lauded franchise reinvention Fast 5, but this ninth entry exposes the fact that the series has almost nowhere left to go. Even by F&F’s riotously OTT standards, it’s a film that puts pedal to the metal and refuses to let up, for better and worse.