You know a franchise has run out of ideas when it sends its characters to space. "As long as we obey the laws of physics, then we'll be fine," Tej Parker (Ludacris) tells Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) as the two prepare to literally drive a car offworld — an odd statement, considering it might be the first time in nine movies that they even acknowledge physics and the laws that govern it. F9 is no exception. Right off the bat, Roman finds himself in a predicament that even Wile E. would find preposterous. Following a miraculous escape, Roman begins to suspect what Cipher (Charlize Theron) seems to already know; that they are all characters in an action movie. Sadly, the film doesn't pursue this direction which would be far more interesting than the Long Lost Brother tale it settles for. It turns out that Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) has a brother, Jakob (John Cena). Like the laws of physics, Dom had never let on that this brother ever even existed. Thus, we get a series of expository flashbacks to provide some background for this new character; you know, so that it doesn’t appear as if they just pulled him out of fucking nowehere. These trips down amnesia lane are what truly sinks the movie. F9 uses the format popularized by The Godfather Part II, in which Al Pacino plays Michael Corleone in the 'present' and Robert De Niro plays Vito Corleone in extended flashbacks. Now, Diesel and Cena are no Pacino or De Niro, but they are two unique individuals endowed with clearly defined personalities and who happen to ooze charisma and self-confidence. In comparison, the actors who play their younger versions are such non-entities that they almost make a good case for digital de-aging (almost). As a result of this, F9 loses all the momentum it has gathered in the contemporary scenes every time it looks back. Moreover, Cena is too obviously a Red Herring; there's a reason he played a 'heroic' character in WWE for roughly 15 years, and it's because he couldn't be a convincing villain even if his life depended on it. Meanwhile, skilled performers like Kurt Russell, Shea Whigham, Michael Rooker, and Helen Mirror are wasted in peripheral roles (not to mention Theron, who spends most of her screen time literally locked inside a transparent box, leaving us to wonder what she does when she has to go to the bathroom), the filmmakers seemingly operating under the impression that they must perforce make room for each and every character who has ever made an appearance at some point in the series. Apart from those already mentioned, we briefly see Lucas Black, Don Omar, Bow Wow, Jason Tobin, Gal Gadot, and Jason Statham in a cameo during the closing credits (unseen by me because once the credits roll, I’m outta there). About the only exception is of course Paul Walker (but not, as one might have reasonably expected, the one who had supposedly died in an explosion in a previous installment), whose character, from what we hear, has been reduced to babysitting Dom's son and his own. Is that the true Fate of the Furious?

Well they did sub-title this a "saga", but I wasn't quite expecting something this poor. Things didn't auger well when the cinema screen broke down and we were turfed out after thirty minutes. Next week, back for part two - complete with "an opportunity to refresh our memories" as the cinema lad put it... Sadly, though, the first half hour provides us with easily the most entertaining elements of this otherwise weak story bereft of just about everything bar some super stunts/visual effects and Charlize Theron locked up in a plastic cage. There is some effort made to create some characters, and Vin Diesel does bring a certain degree of charisma to the screen, but after an initial flurry of decent motor sport action, we drop from a great height into a family revenge/melodrama that has only one, entirely predictable, conclusion. It is a piece of harmless escapism that serves to divert us from reality for an extremely overlong 2 hrs and 20 minutes but this franchise really misses Paul Walker and although I'm sure nobody will listen, this is not much of a testament to his memory and ought to be the last unless someone is going to revamp the concept thoroughly and invest in solid stories and characters to compliment the endless, and increasingly sterile, visuals. I want one of those planes, though....

The Fast and Furious franchise has, since quite a few movies back, abandoned all pretense of being anything but silly, unrealistic, action extravaganzas. That means that these movies are not to everyone’s taste (which no movies really are for that matter) but it seems a lot of those people have watched this movie anyway and then pretends to be surprised. Those who give this movie one star ratings have obviously never seen a real one star movie and those asshats that start their review with “I left after xx minutes” are just trolls. If you have not watched the movie, all of it, don’t write a bloody “review”. To me this movie was pretty much what I expected. Perhaps even a bit more silly and over the top than the previous ones, not that this was much of a surprise, but still more or less what I expected. It has a half decent, quite predictable, story that’s just good enough to tie the action sequences together. I do whish stupid Hollywood writers that probably never finished basic school would stop write stories with their favorite “device yyy which can take over all electronics” bullshit in them. Apart from being total scientific nonsense it is really, really overused. Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel. I cannot remember many, if any, movies where I have not liked his character. His team is pretty likable as well although some of their silly shenanigans and ramblings was indeed a bit tiresome from time to time. The core of the movie is of course the action and special effects. Sure, they are incredibly over the top and for the most of the time you have to put your brain in idle when watching them but if you, like me, like special effects this is a movie for you. The silly scene where the bad guys “tank train” flipped over was a bit too much for me as well but on the whole I enjoyed the action. I was not too thrilled with all the flashbacks but then I almost never like flashbacks and there was plenty of them in this movie. I would have liked Chipher to have a bigger role in the movie. She is cool as well as intelligent which is not something that really could be said about Dom’s brother. The main bad guy was just a jerk and not very charismatic. Hollywood really seems to have a problem writing good bad guys lately. Overall, this was some well spent almost two and a half hours (I watched the directors cut). I quite enjoyed this movie.