Disclaimer: This movie review is a loose transcription from our podcast where we do all our movie reviews – link is at the bottom of this page to listen in!
James:
We’ve just seen Fast X at the New Zealand premiere. What is your take?
Nayan:
I really enjoyed it – thoroughly enjoyed it more than Fate of the Furious or F9: Fast Saga. It doesn’t reach the heights of Furious 7 but it was a good Fast and Furious film, you know, for what it is. I really enjoyed that it did bring the franchise back to its roots as it had the street racing and then it had heist scenes but with like an interesting twist and everything.
The way it ended was a perfect way to lean into the last movie, in my opinion. Oh my gosh, Jason Momoa. During his speech when he introduced the film to us, he said that he had so much fun playing this role and you can clearly see that on the screen. The way he portrayed this character of Dante Reyes was very similar to Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Yeah, somewhat psychotic, but also like goofy at the same time. Yeah, it was actually really fun to see him interesting villainous role like this. I think it’s probably one of my favourite roles I’ve seen from Jason, at least more recently, probably because it’s something different to what we’ve seen before in the past.
As for the visual component – there are some cool shots and then like there’s a scene where Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) goes into an abandoned police warehouse and there’s like a grainy black sort of backdrop that was something unique for this franchise and added more tension to the moment. When it comes to the action, and I’m sure you’ll dive into it, but yeah, it was pretty standard Fast and Furious. The CGI explosion overload and the hand-to-hand combat scenes were just overcut. At points, you don’t even know what’s happening because it becomes all blurred together.
The way I thought the structure of the story and the characters themselves was very interesting. Throughout all these Fast and Furious films, it’s always been the family together and working together. With this one, they seem to have taken an Avengers: Infinity War sort of approach and split everyone up from the core group. So I am assuming in the final form, we’ll see them all working together and eventually coming to defeat the big bad in Jason Momoa. Yeah, I certainly enjoyed it.
James:
I’m on the same board there and I’m glad you covered the whole Avengers: Infinity War approach to this because I was gonna say the same thing as yeah, everyone’s split up. You barely see some of the characters together, which is really interesting, because it’s never been like that with these films. I think on a structural level, some of it was all over the place. I think some of the dialogue and the writing was bad. It was bad. There were some points where I could tell it was trying to make me laugh and all I wanted to do was run out of the theatre.
As for Jason Momoa, he introduced the film at the premiere and he’s saying, this is the funnest role he has ever played. It’s a very interesting character he is portraying here and it just seems like Jason was having a really fun time with it. As he said, he’s enjoying himself and you feel that on screen. It’s a bit shocking at first. It took me a while to really get on board with it but like once I kind of saw what they were doing with that character, I was enjoying it. It is different for Momoa to be playing that kind of role is very interesting and I like the different direction. It also did remind me a lot of Joker in terms of chaos and not really caring in a deep sense. Yeah, it makes it far more interesting. Even if it’s a little bit silly at times.
Yeah, but it hits the same beats as most of the Fast and Furious movies. I do think this one is better than Fate and F9, just mainly because this story is moving forward. In terms of these characters and the story, it’s moving to something, I felt like Fate and F9 weren’t really as they felt like standalone movies. This movie knows what it wants to be and it knows it’s building up to something so I appreciate that aspect. The ending gets you something to be excited for, every Fast and Furious movie ends with them at a barbecue and as a big happy family.
On the technical side of things. Yeah as you said, the action is not good. The action is bad and I had a hard time watching it. It felt like it was shot by 1000 different cameras and they used one second from every single camera. It just kept cutting and cutting and cutting. I wish it was like something like Mad Max Fury Road or John Wick where they are completely action-driven movies. Except, it’s so visceral and exciting. This movie has so much action in it and there are too few times where it’s slowing down and the characters are having room to breathe and whatnot. I think with movies where it’s so heavily action-packed, it needs to be stylistic and needs to be very interesting. If you have very bland, generic quick cuts in action set-pieces, all with no interesting shot selection, it makes for a pretty poor experience. Yeah, besides that, I don’t have too much to add, but it kind of it restores some interest in the Fast and Furious franchise. What would you rate the film
Nayan:
I am probably I’m thinking about 7.7/10. How about you?
James:
I’m actually gonna go a whole point below you with 6.7/10.
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