F9 Review

 

F9 (aka F9: The Fast Saga or Fast & Furious 9) is an action movie, the sequel to 2017's The Fate of the Furious, and the ninth movie in the main film series but the overall tenth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise. The movie is produced by One Race Films, Original Film, Roth/Kirschenbaum Films, and Perfect Storm Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. F9 is written by Justin Lin and Daniel Casey and directed by Justin Lin.

The story is set after the events of The Fate of the Furious, and Dominic Toretto along with his wife Letty and their son Brian are living a peaceful life. That all changes when someone is planning on destroying Dominic along with everyone he loves and cares for, this someone is no other than Dominic's brother Jakob. And just to make matters worse he's teamed up with their old enemy Cipher.

Initial Reaction

Having enjoyed The Fate of the Furious and this franchise's spin-off Hobbs and Shaw, I was pumped for this one. Then...well....COVID happened and the movie had it's release date changed numerous times. Thankful it was coming out this year, and what was gonna make this specific viewing experience even better was my local theater was finally reopening.

Cons

I've got nothing to say. Let's move on.

Middle Ground

One thing about the movie I've got a mix feeling on is Jakob. While I understand the motivation it still felt like more could've gone into how and why he became what he is. Another gray area with F9 is really the story itself. There were somethings I didn't mind, but other times there was quite a lot of exposition going on. And there were some scenes where they got self aware, which just made me roll my eyes. Kinda makes me hope that maybe, hopefully that Chris Morgan (writer of Tokyo Drift all the way to The Fate of the Furious, and the spin-off Hobbs and Shaw) will come back, but from what I've seen so far, he might not.

Pros

One thing I liked about the movie is the action. Everything you heard about the action scenes being ridiculously crazy is true, and I loved every moment of it. They were fun! So I really don't understand why critics were complaining? Have they NOT been paying attention of the previous installments? Another good thing about the film was Justin Lin's directing. The way he directed the action sequences from car chases to fist fights was great. The last thing I'll give F9 credit for is that mid-credit scene. Really made me wonder what's going to happen to those two specific characters given their history.

While I didn't hate F9 I will consider it a weak edition of the Fast and Furious series. The script had some good stuff in it but did need some rewrites here and there. And Jakob could've used a lot more to his character, because what he got felt like step one to his villainous origin story. The good things are the absolute insane action scenes, Lin's directing, and the mid-credit scene.

My final rating is Okay.

Well, that's going to do it for me. Come back on Monday, Jun 28th for my Underrated Films review of The Rundown. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.