Mr. Movie: ‘F9’ is the best of the bunch

With each installment of the Fast & Furious series the need to suspend disbelief becomes more important. No. Let’s make that necessary. Even critical. If you can’t do the suspension and — pun definitely intended — go along with the ride, the movie won’t be that enjoyable.

Before I end my preamble, if suspension is disbelief is impossible for you then you aren’t going to wind up at a Fast & Furious movie anyway.

Like its older cousins, “F9: The Fast Saga” lays a long strip of rubber out of the starting gate, and with peddle to the metal, and a flourish, the 9th movie in the franchise roars toward the finish line.

And that finish is nothing short of spectacular.

Director Justin Lin — who also helps write the script — has rewritten the car crash stunt book. He goes all out and seamlessly melds CGI with some incredible driving stunts. Lin (who did four of the now nine movies) and his auto crashing experts will blow your mind.

The scenes at the climax are so mind blowing that you — like me — will want to get up, scream at the projection booth window and demand a rewind. It is going to drive a lot of us to pick up the DVD when it goes on sale just to see, and dissect, the finale.

It’s so well-done that it’s almost impossible to tell where real life ends and CGI begins. And sitting here thinking about it now, I’m not convinced there was all that much CGI. Whatever Lin and his movie stunt gurus did, it works and works very, very well.

Oh. Yes. The story. Duh. Dom’s younger brother, Jakob is a bad guy. He and other baddies have stolen half of what looks like a soccer ball and with the other half will be able to take control of all satellites, all those weapons in space and rule the world.

I know. We’ve been there and done that a zillion times. James Bond this isn’t.

The backstory tells of how Dom and Jakob became enemies. Finn Cole plays the young Jakob and Vinnie Bennett does Dom as a teenager. Bennett towers above Cole.

Today’s Jakob is played by John Cena. He and Vin Diesel are close to the same height with Cena being a bit taller. And neither Cole nor Bennett look much like the two stars. So the backstory casting is not done well. Since it adds a lot of flavor to the story, and helps pad the movie, it is forgivable.

Like Diesel, Cena isn’t going to set the world on fire with his acting. He is — like Diesel — quite charismatic and doing the bad guy thing almost works. That requires returning to my preamble and reviewing suspension of disbelief.

You may know this already, or you may find it from other sources, or other reviews, but you didn’t hear it from me. I think jumping the gun about who else joins the cast hits spoiler territory so I’m not going to say.

I will note that you’ll see some acting surprises. Nice ones. And these are surprises that add to the quality of the movie.

Here’s what won’t surprise you. The muscle cars. A ton of autos are pulverized in sometimes slow and magnificent ways in “F9.”

I love it when a main character’s ride is destroyed. A scene or two later and the character is driving a new vehicle and it’s super-souped up. Since we’re suspending disbelief, and, since in the last few movies the franchise has entered James Bond territory, maybe characters carry new vehicles around in their shirt pockets. You know, like those miniature cars you can pick up at a store for the kids.

Add a little water and — presto — there’s a brand new car.

It’s a fun thought that makes as much sense as anything else in the Fast & Furious movies. Fun but not close to as much fun as the car chases, car crashes, gunplay, bomb play and assaults on the senses from land, sea and air. With every one of these movies I try to count the cars and trucks that get trashed.

I lost count almost immediately. Destruction comes so fast that it’s impossible to keep up. But who cares? Right? This is Fast & Furious. We’re not going to this movie for the star power of Diesel, Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges and the other actors playing key roles in the movie.

The action is why we pay to see Fast & Furious movies.

Speaking of fast. Normally, a 2:25 minute movie seems like an eternity. A good example of that are super hero movies. They are almost always super blown up. In their case, less is more. Outside of “Thor: Ragnarok,” super hero writers haven’t figured that out yet.

The formula for the Fast & Furious movies looks more like more is more. For some reason it works. I cannot explain why. Larger than life people doing larger than life things in a larger than life arena has us — back to that suspension stuff — eating it up.

Lastly, how does “F9: The Fast Saga” compare to the other films? I didn’t love the first four films. They weren’t awful but they weren’t great. The franchise has grown up and the producers have found that packing a movie with some laughs helps.

At “Fast Five” things started to get lots better. The addition of Dwayne Johnson helped. He’s now gone. I didn’t think that would be a positive. While it isn’t a good thing, he’s also not missed that much.

So how does “F9” stack up? In my book, it’s the best of the bunch.

▪ Rated PG-13 for extreme violence and some language. It’s playing at the Fairchild Cinemas Southgate 10, Queensgate 12 and at the Fairchild Pasco theater and at the AMC Classic Kennewick 12.

▪ Rating: 4 out of 5

This story was originally published June 25, 2021 at 3:06 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: ‘F9’ is the best of the bunch."