Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they've ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who's fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family and destroy everything—and everyone—that Dom loves, forever.
20 Jun Fast X (2023)
Neonoir Reversed
There are three components to these kinds of products. Action scenes of some kind, a cosmology, and a story to weave them together. Characters and drama are irrelevant.
For me, sometimes the cosmology was enough, like the middle ‘Wick’ projects. Sometimes it blows me away, but more often these days I end up scratching my head.
These cosmologies are nearly all in the noir tradition as I understand it. Some poor yobbo is lifted out of his/her life to deal with forces outside of their control for our amusement. Sometimes those forces are cleverly mapped to our identity as viewer, like Quentin does, but with loud cartoon movies it is about conspiracies and master plans.
The cosmology in the Fast series has increasingly become befuddling. Overlapping hidden but all-powerful organisations in turn fight each other and always our inside group. People come back from the dead. Settled events in the past are revisited and reversed. Lots of shifts occur between being allied with our gang and being against.
In a slightly more interesting cosmos, I’d be tempted to sort out the dynamic backstories of each of these. But it simply isn’t worth it, so all the machinery of noir, all that plotting and shifting, all the reveals and hidden technology lairs are all wasted on me. So I have to look at the cheesy effects and increasingly more brutal fights.
The one surprise here was Cena and how appealing he was.
Posted in 2023
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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