Film Review - Fast X (2023)

Fast X is the tenth Fast and Furious film and this time Louis Letterier steps into the directors driving seat after Justin Lin quit during production, this time Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family face off against Dante (Jason Momoa) who is hell bent on seeking revenge against Dom and his family for the death of his father during 2011’s Fast Five but Dom and his family will have other allies to help them.

Fast X is better than 2021’s Fast 9 and 2017’s The Fate of the Furious neither of which I thought were very good though Fast 9 wasn’t as bad I felt as others thought it was but it also feels very unsatisfying when its all over.

But before I delve more onto that road I want to stay in this lane of positivity and first and foremost Jason Momoa is excellent here and easily my favourite part of this movie as Dante the villain, he is clearly having a great time in this role and he feels like the Joker to Dom’s Batman in many ways and boy does it work.

It was also great to see Charlize Theron in this movie and watching her scenes this time around made me feel all the more disappointed that she isn’t returning as Furiosa for the upcoming Mad Max spinoff as she deserved to reprise that role and I think that is really going to hurt that film when it comes out.

As for the rest of the cast again their fine but sometimes it feels like “here’s this person”, “here’s this person”, “here’s this person” as if their walking on stage on SNL or a talk show and it gets a bit much after the first couple and again the other core family actors are okay but don’t get as much to do except for John Cena who is much better here than in F9.

But back to the unsatisfying feeling on the whole and here is where I have to turn on the indicator into the negative lane as this movie ends in a way that when its over you sit there and think “That’s it, is that all” and not in a good way and a great cliffhanger like the Empire Strikes Back or the Two Towers or a great tease of the next film like in X-Men 2 or Days of Future Past or Dune Part 1 should make you want to crave the next film right there and then you should want to count down the days until it comes out and you should attempt to not drive everyone you know crazy with your anticipation for that next film.

But here that doesn’t take place and personally I would’ve preferred this movie have another 20 minutes added onto it so we got a proper conclusion or another 5 to 10 minutes to give it a much better cliffhanger ending that made us want the next film because I felt kinda cheated when this was over.

As for the car chases again their okay but nothing you’ve really seen elsewhere and done better in the previous films especially Fast 5, 6 and 7 and there’s some good hand to hand fight scenes here but the only one of those I liked was Theron vs Michelle Rodriguez.

And so that was Fast X and this family isn’t your fortress this time around nor does the Way of Petrol feel satisfying instead it feels like a beginning without an end and the car feeling like a home your stuck in before your birth and after your death, 1 and a half out of 5.