fast x christian movie review

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Crime , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• May 19, 2023
• Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto; Tyrese Gibson as Roman; Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz; Ludacris as Tej; Sung Kang as Han; Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey; Jason Momoa as Dante; John Cena as Jakob; Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto; Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw; Rita Moreno as Abuela Toretto; Helen Mirren as Queenie; Brie Larson as Tess; Charlize Theron as Cipher; Alan Ritchson as Aimes; Leo Abelo Perry as Little Brian; Luis Da Silva Jr. as Diogo; Scott Eastwood as Little Nobody; Daniela Melchior as Isabel

Home Release Date

• June 9, 2023
• Louis Leterrier

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Dominic Toretto is one lucky guy.

He’s driven cars out of flying airplanes. He’s driven cars through skyscrapers. (Not through the lobbies of skyscrapers. We’re talking about vaulting through the air 50 stories up.) He’s driven cars that pull 10-ton safes straight out of walls, then has used said safes as square bowling balls to knock other cars off the road.

Perhaps, given all the explosions and engine noises he’s dealt with the last 22 years, Dom’s luckiest break (brake?) of all is that his eardrums are still intact.

But the mechanic/street racer/carjacker/international spy’s luck-tank may be running out of gas. Dom has made some enemies over time. And after a career built on breaking both the laws of man and physics, someone wants to break him —one piece at a time.

That man is Dante Reyes, son of the late drug kingpin Hernan Reyes. Dante watched as Dom and his friend, Brian O’Conner, swiped said 10-ton safe from his pops, after which Dom used it to slingshot his own car into Hernan’s vehicle. (Who knew that safes could be so mobile and useful?) And while Dante was conspicuously absent from the event as chronicled in Fast 5 , don’t tell Dante he wasn’t there. Because he’ll take offense and kill your whole family.

That’s kind of Dante’s style. If someone wrongs him? Threaten that someone’s family. If Dante wants someone to work for him? Why, he’ll threaten his family. If someone kills Dante’s father? Ooooh, yeah, that’s a threatenin’.

Dante is rich enough—and insane enough—to make good on those threats against Dom’s family. And if you’re familiar with the Fast & Furious movies at all, you know Dom’s all about family.

He’s married these days, to fellow street racer Letty Ortiz. He’s got a kid, too. Brian—Little B., they call him—is about 10 years old and just now learning how to drift. And Dom’s siblings, Jakob and Mia are as close as close can be.

But Dom considers his crew family, too. Roman, Tej, Han, Ramsey … they’re as connected as a crankshaft and timing chain, as tight with each other as pistons and O-rings. When you burn as much rubber together as these folks do, you burn a little of their love into your soul, too.

Yep, Dom’s got a big family. And Dante hopes to destroy that family, bit by bit. It’s not enough for Dom to die. No, his father taught Dante that their enemies must suffer . So while Dom can make cars fly and safes swing and the laws of gravity itself bend to his whim, Dante believes that he’s more than a match for Mr. Toretto.

Dom’s luck might be on its last fumes.

Positive Elements

As you’d expect, you hear a lot about family in Fast X , and that familial angle leans particularly hard in the direction of Dom and his son, Little B.

Dom does his best to pass on everything he knows to his child. He brags that Little B. will be better than him one day: “Each generation better than the last,” he says. “That’s fatherhood.”

And he takes fatherhood very seriously. Dom prides himself on always keeping his promises to his son—and he promises (somewhat redundantly?) that he’ll never break one. When someone asks him why he’s still driving and working on cars with carburetors in them instead of faster, “better” fuel-injected vehicles, Dom explains that the carburetors teach Little B to listen—something that, in Dom’s estimation, people do far too little of. And, of course, he’ll risk his life habitually to save the life of his boy.

“I only want to protect the people I love,” Dom says. That covers plenty of people we meet here, and the street runs both ways. Plenty of folks risk their lives (and sometimes give them) to save their compatriots. Others push against unfair directives aimed at Dom’s team, both out of loyalty and a sense of fair play. And despite the outlandish levels of collateral damage we see here—mainly to cars and buildings—Dom and his pals care about the innocents imperiled by the events of this movie, and they often do everything they can to minimize unnecessary casualties. (At other times, such collateral damage feels like a bit of an afterthought, but hey. This is a Fast & Furious movie.)

Spiritual Elements

Dom and others make several references to faith during the film, often connecting that faith to the crucifix that Dom wears around his neck. These sincere-but-superficial references to faith go little farther, but it clearly implies that Dom is not just a Christian, but one who relies on God in any number of impossible situations. “Nothing is impossible,” he reminds his son. “You just have to have faith.”

We also hear other, less spiritual references to faith and religion.

Dante’s name may be designed to point viewers to the Italian author Dante. He’s famous for his Divine Comedy , of course, which takes readers on a tour of hell, purgatory and heaven—with the first book, Inferno , being the best known. That’s where the concept of the nine circles of hell comes from, and you could argue that the movie’s makers are suggesting that Dante is dragging Dom through his own nine circles.

Dante also wryly suggests that Dom is some sort of saint—reminding him that to be a saint, one must either perform miracles or die a martyr. Dante also tries to blow up the Vatican, though he blames the choice on his unwilling henchmen. (“OK, I’ll do it,” Dante says, feigning reluctance. “But you guys are going to hell.”) When Dom saves the Vatican from the bomb, Dante mentions his heroism later. “Who does that?” he says, referencing saving the holy city. “The pope? God?”

Cipher, another ongoing villainess in the Fast & Furious franchise, reluctantly warns Dom about Dante after she has a run-in with the latter. “I met the devil tonight,” she tells Dom. “Honestly, I always thought it was me, so it was kind of disappointing.”

We see churches (some of which have been damaged by explosions) and crucifixes. A bit of technology is referred to as “God’s eye.” There’s a suggestion that someone may be helping bring people together beyond the grave.

Sexual Content

A scene in Rio de Janeiro features plenty of dancing women in tight, skimpy outfits. The camera seems to focus especially on barely clad posteriors and the like.

Dom and Letty spend some time on their bed, engaging in gently suggestive talk. (Dom asks if Little B.’s in bed and marvels that Letty gets more beautiful with each day.) He squeezes her thigh, but the scene goes no farther. Other women can wear somewhat revealing garb. Ramsay, a female hacker for Dom’s team, renews an acquaintance with an old flame.

While Dante’s sexual preferences aren’t dealt with here, actor Jason Momoa (famous for his role as Aquaman ) intentionally plays with the character’s sexuality. “He’s very sadistic and androgynous, and he’s a bit of a peacock,” he told Variety . “He’s got a lot of issues, this guy.”

Violent Content

Holy Toledo, we could fill up the entire internet with this section.

It’s not that the violence here is gory or even particularly bloody. But if you’ve seen a Fast & Furious film, you can take that and goose it with a little nitrous oxide for this installment. The plot may feature more explosions than words. As such, we’ll not detail every conflagration here, but we will give you a little overview of what to expect.

The opening set piece features a giant bomb literally rolling through the streets of Rome. It smashes cars (moving and not), crashes through a bus, destroys countless bits of property and catches fire. Dom helpfully crashes his own car into restaurant awnings, thus protecting diners from the blaze. The bomb goes off, but not as had been planned: Had it done what Dante wanted it to do, it would’ve leveled Rome’s famous seven hills down to “two-and-a-half.” Other, smaller explosives send various vehicles flying and exploding. But despite the incredible destruction the bomb leaves in its wake (not to mention that of the folks chasing it), we learn later that, improbably, no one died.

That is what this movie would like us to believe: Even though dozens—perhaps hundreds—of vehicles are smashed, mashed and completely obliterated, the movie’s junkyards are far busier than its hospitals.

People do die, however. Some are killed in fiery explosions. Others are shot or stabbed or sliced, and at least one appears to suffer a broken neck. Another is impaled by a bit of elevator machinery.

We see the corpses of two such victims, their faces disfigured by what looks like packing tape as someone paints their toenails. Both have bulging eyes, and a fly lands grotesquely on one eyeball.

Characters fight frenetically in several scenes—leaving each other bloody and bruised. Many people get shot; some survive, others do not. One woman stabs another in the shoulder. People fall down from a couple of stories up. Two characters nearly drown. Someone loses a tooth. Planes explode. Cars explode. Buildings explode. Restraint explodes.

Crude or Profane Language

When Little B. nearly says the s-word during one scene, his Uncle Jakob tells him that that word is only allowed for “song lyrics and stubbed toes.”

Later he amends that statement to include “cannon cars,” and the film itself makes plenty of other exceptions as well. The s-word is used at least 13 times (not to mention the two times that Little B almost says it). We hear other profanities as well, including “a–,” “b–tard,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused five times, four of which also involve the word “d–n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Characters drink beer. A covert equipment dealer also sells “fun muffins.” Han eats one and begins to hallucinate. We know that Dante’s father was a notorious drug lord. Liquor flows at a party. Vodka is used as fuel. When someone suggests using bottles of wine as well, he’s told that just won’t work.

Other Negative Elements

This probably won’t surprise you, but people drive recklessly here. We hear about Dom’s crew’s checkered, sometimes felonious past (complete with clips from previous movies).

Given the Fast & Furious series’ emphasis on cars, it seems appropriate that most of its best messages would fit on a bumper sticker.

“You got no honor,” Dom tells Dante at one point. “Without honor, you got no family. Without family, you got nothing.”

Fast X is filled with similar aphorisms, embracing the values of family and friendship, faith and sacrifice. Those messages are nice, and sometimes even praiseworthy.

But, of course, encouraging its viewers to be better people isn’t Fast X ’s primary goal. This is all about giving its audience the adrenaline-fueled experience they’ve come to expect.

Naturally, Plugged In has come to expect the issues that go along with said experience. The violence and mayhem here are unremitting. People get hurt and sometimes die. The film sneezes out explosions as if it had some wicked seasonal allergies.

But while Dom trumpets the value of honor, let’s not lose sight of how many laws are broken in pursuit of Dom’s honorable goals. Or how many law enforcement officers have their patrol cars smashed and various bones broken.

If those elements went AWOL in Fast & Furious , of course, it wouldn’t be a Fast & Furious film. Those are necessary ingredients in this high-octane dish. The swearing? Well, this frenzied feast could easily throttle back on the spicy language.

For fans of the franchise, Fast X is an entertaining, somewhat frustrating addition to the canon. The series is beginning a long curtain call. So this installment features plenty of cliffhangers to ensure fans will be back for the next two chapters.

But while the storyline features a few surprises (which we’ve not spoiled here, hopefully), the content concerns are no surprise at all.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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FILM VIOLENCE —How does viewing violence in movies affect families? Answer

“The end of the road begins”

D ominic Teretto (aka “Dom”) has grown accustomed to family life. I mean, come on, he and Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) have a beautiful son, a large extended family, and live in a nice home on the outskirts of L.A., what more could he possibly want? His adventuring days, he figures, are coming to an end.

Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ) receives a tip from the Agency to steal a computer chip during its transit in Rome. Since it seems like a simple mission, it doesn’t require the whole team, so Dom ( Vin Diesel ) and Letty decide to hang back while the rest of the team go over.

It’s not long before a not so welcome visitor pops up at Dom’s door, Cipher ( Charlize Theron ). She’s scratched, bruised and warns Dom that there is a new threat on the horizon named Dante ( Jason Momoa ), one that is targeting Dom, on a mission to ensure to slowly destroy Dom, his family, his reputation and everything he loves dear. Cipher goes on to explain that Dante has a very personal vendetta against Dom and lives without rules or morals. Dom suddenly comes to realize that the mission in Rome is a trap, and he and Letty race to Rome to go save the team when they come upon their new threat, Dante.

To sum up this threat properly, as Dom would put it: “In a world where there is no code, no one is safe. Truer words have never been spoken by Dom. Let’s just hope for Dom and the team’s sake that he’s wrong…

To the first timer, or perhaps someone new to the whole “Fast and Furious” franchise, one might look from the outside and wonder, “Why have there been 10 films (and one spinoff) to the Fast franchise?” It’s beating a dead horse isn’t it? Indeed, the Fast Franchise is notorious for being one of the longest running film franchises to date, and perhaps a franchise that has far overstayed its welcome in some viewers’ eyes. I won’t get into this argument in length again, as I already did this in the previous review for Fast 9 .

I will state, however, that one might argue “Fast X” brings a sense of vigor and rejuvenation to what was a very stale and stagnant franchise. Here me out. Over the past few films, it’s been about the secret agent work, the romance, the side stories; anything BUT the racing, which was EXACTLY what the original “ Fast and Furious ” film was about! The racing! In “Fast X” however, the racing becomes integral to the rest of the story (you have to look close enough though), which is a breath of fresh air; yet there is still a balance between those who appreciate the drama/romance and those who are there for the action/racing.

Contrary to what the critics are stating, I don’t find that the actors themselves have lost their heart for the franchise. I found many endearing and passionate performances throughout, though perhaps Vin Diesel might have shown some moments of fatigue through some of his dialog. The most terrifying, yet engaging performance, is Jason Momoa’s performance as Dante. His character is sadistic and horrifying—both in subtle and not so subtle ways, and Jason knows this fully well, playing with these characteristics throughout in a spine-chilling (and sometimes downright shocking) manner.

However, what I do find troubling with this latest chapter is the foul language, the increased amount of sexualized content (including sexualized females), and the violence for the film has certainly increased. It’s troubling, quite honestly, because while I understand that the film is trying to go out with a bang with the final three chapters (yes “Fast X” is being divided into THREE parts), there simply is no reason to increase the amount and extent of vulgar, distasteful content just to fill the seats. Your fans will be faithful till the final credits roll.

Content for Concern

VIOLENCE: There is a TON of violence in “Fast X,” so much so that listing it all would be as long as a book, and as such I won’t list everything. Toward the beginning of the film some cars smash a wall and steal a vault. This vault is attached to the cars and is seen being dragged around town destroying everything in its path (and I do mean everything); it even sends vehicles with people in them over a bridge into the water, including police vehicles, killing a character. A character is killed in a flashback (in fact a couple are in a few flashbacks).

Dante’s henchmen are seen taking guard’s families hostage via live footage threatening to kill them unless the guards leave another villain and follow him. There are multiple car chases and explosions. A scene with an armored truck smashing cars. Trucks are seen flipping over and exploding. A runaway bomb is shown causing destruction throughout the city of Rome.

There’s an extended chase scene. In one incredible scene, explosions are seen throughout Rome leaving destruction everywhere. Guards are seen trying to kidnap a woman and a young child (they are unsuccessful) and the guards are killed. A car detonates with someone inside and another detonates. Glass is thrown inside someone’s eyes. Characters are shot and killed. Characters die in a massive explosion. There is a massive car chase. A plane is shot down with people inside and we watch it crash into a mountain. A car explodes after driving down a dam. We see an explosion next to two characters occur before the camera cutaways (we don’t know what happens).

Guards are gassed. Dante talks to two rotting corpses about his thoughts and plans (guards he killed). A scientist is gassed.

VULGARITY: A** (6), S*cks (1), Son of a b*tch (1), Sh*t (13), B*stard (1), “Shut the front door” (a cover for something very obvious, “Black Bezos” and an off-color comment about a character’s death.

PROFANITY: G*d-d*mn (1), G*d-d*mnit (1), OMG (1), H*ly Sh*t (2, 1 cut off), d*mn (2), d*mnit (2),amd h*ll (10).

SEXUAL CONTENT: Dom and Lenny share a tender moment in bed together, almost engaging in intercourse but come short due to a conversation. There is a discussion about different sexual positions.

NUDITY: Letty is seen in PJs and a T-shirt. Females are seen in crop-tops and very sensual clothing at a drag-racing event and other events. There is some sexualized dancing in the film. A guy, half-naked, thought to be dead, walks out of a body bag.

ALCOHOL: Characters are seen drinking at a family gathering, a drag-racing event and at various other points throughout the film.

DRUGS: Someone takes a small LSD trip by acciden.t

Dom says he is all about honor and about being honorable amongst everything. This includes putting himself above everyone and everything for his family and his extended family.

What does honor mean for Christians? Is it about we ourselves being honored by our peers? Is it self-gratification? No, it is about our walk and how we live in service to God and for others. Honor is about glorifying the Father by our witness, by what we say and by what we do to and for others. For Christians, the Bible is clear that this also includes those who God has put in authority over us: when we honor them, we also honor God. This includes our parents, our church elders, the authorities and the elected officials (whether we like them or not).

Regarding our parents it states:

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. — Exodus 20:12

Regarding authority it states:

“Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes , pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” — Romans 13:7

Regarding the Church Elders:

“The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching”. — 1 Timothy 5:17

In Psalms with regards to honoring God it states the following:

“You who fear the Lord , praise him! All you descendants of Jacob , honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel !” — Psalm 22:23

John recorded the following statement by Jesus Christ about our service to God …

“If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” — John 12:26

Closing Thoughts

The end of the road truly has begun. It’s not just a tagline for “Fast X.” The minute I saw the Universal logo appear I knew this had been 22 years in the making and what a journey it has been, and it’s still not over yet (that’s by no means a spoiler by the way).

“Fast X” has elicited a colossal amount of conflicting thoughts in me. On one hand “Fast X” is a nice return to the franchise’s roots. On the other hand, the violence is the heaviest the franchise has had in its 11 films, not to mention there are some not so subtle jabs at Christians (particularly Catholicism), some sexualized content and language to contend with.

I’m sorry to say that I cannot recommend this film for Christians, as there is too much questionable content to ignore. It’s definitely NOT recommended for teens or children by any means. Viewer discretion is advised.

• Violence: Very Heavy
• Vulgar/Crude language: Moderately Heavy
• Drugs/Alcohol: Moderately Heavy
• Profane language: Moderate
• Nudity: Moderate
• Sex: Moderate
• Occult: None
• Wokeism: None

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

PLEASE share your observations and insights to be posted here.

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Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Movie Review: ‘Fast X’

NEW YORK (OSV News) – As its title indicates, “Fast X” (Universal) is the 10th direct installment of the “Fast & Furious” car-racing franchise that first put the pedal to the metal back in 2001. So by now, the characteristic ingredients of the series’ recipe should be familiar.

On the one hand, they include references to the need for a very vaguely defined version of faith as well as religious imagery that might be characterized as Catholic-lite. There’s also much rhetoric about the bonds that unite its self-constituted family of skilled drivers. Yet offsetting these congenial – if inconsequential – details, as usual, is a high quotient of nasty mayhem.

This time out, the clan’s patriarch, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), goes up against Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the scion of a Brazilian drug-dealing dynasty. As those paying close attention will recall, Dante’s dad, Hernán (Joaquim de Almeida), tangled with Dom and his crew back in 2011’s “Fast Five” – with fatal results. Needless to say, Dante is not exactly the forgiving type.

Loopy but resourceful, Dante doesn’t necessarily want to kill Dom. Instead he aims to make him suffer. So he targets those closest to Dom, including his brother, Jakob (John Cena), his wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and his young son, Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).

In fact, Dante is so ingenious that, early on in the proceedings, he somehow gets hold of a neutron bomb with which he threatens Rome in general and the Vatican in particular. The sight of this device rolling through the streets of the Eternal City is an apt reminder that any resemblance to reality in director Louis Leterrier’s glossy adventure is purely accidental.

Thus the fact that the gang – which also includes aspiring leader Roman (Tyrese Gibson), tech whiz Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and gifted hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) – continues to show a reckless disregard for the welfare of pursuing police and innocent pedestrians need not be taken very seriously.

In lieu of applying moral scrutiny, those grown moviegoers for whom this extension of the saga is appropriate can relax, munch their popcorn and laugh at the often overheated, occasionally risible dialogue (scripted by Justin Lin and Dan Mazeau). As for those who can’t get enough of Dom and his pals, a cliffhanger ending points to outing 11.

The film contains frequent bloodless but sometimes harsh violence, gruesome images, a scene of marital sensuality, a few uses of profanity, about a half-dozen milder oaths, considerable crude and crass language and an obscene gesture. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Has the Fast & Furious franchise earned a victory lap? That’s the key question behind an appraisal of “Fast X,” a film that brazenly plays like a Greatest Hits collection from a hit artist. Not only does it directly link to the massive, franchise-turning “ Fast Five ” in its narrative, but it constantly recalls other films in this series either through direct mention or action beats designed to recall similar moments in movies like “ Fast & Furious 6 ,” “ Furious 7 ,” and “ The Fate of the Furious .” The script by Dan Mazeau and "Fast Five" director  Justin Lin (who left the film after creative differences and whose absence is felt in terms of action choreography) is like a snake eating its own tail, often playing like a parody of the franchise more than a new entry that cruises on its own four wheels. Even as it’s spinning through enjoyably goofy action set pieces, most of them enlivened greatly by a fun performance from Jason Momoa , there’s a desperate familiarity to all of “Fast X” that makes it even more like reheated leftovers than it has before. This is reportedly the start of a trilogy that will close the series. Let’s hope they come up with at least one fresh idea in the next two flicks.

Maybe it’s the leaden way in which director Louis Leterrier treats these beloved characters, but the opening scenes of “Fast X” are among the worst in all ten films, a cavalcade of conversations about family, legacy, and other FF tropes. It’s one thing for a character like Dom Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) to preach the importance of family, but it’s another with notes of Charlie Puth playing over gauzy shots of him looking at press stills of Paul Walker . There was an opportunity here to give us “Old Man Dom”—he is 56, after all—but it’s as if Diesel and his team have no idea what that looks like other than to make their tough guy a little wistful. There’s an odd construction to these early scenes that use the oft-parodied trope of Dom saying “family” as a constant whipping post. They diminish what these films were at their best (installments five through seven) by reducing Toretto and his gang to their most obvious qualities. No one expects great character depth at this point, but do we need so many scenes of Dom grunting "family" and looking worried when he sees his son ‘Little B’ ( Leo Abelo Perry )?

“Fast X” improves greatly when Momoa’s Dante Reyes begins his plan to torture Dom and his furious family. Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ), Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ) head off to Rome on a mission, but it’s a trap designed by Reyes, the son of Hernan Reyes, who was killed when Dom and company rolled a safe through Rio in “Fast Five.” Dante says repeatedly that he doesn’t want to kill Dom; he wants him to suffer. That apparently entails an elaborate scheme to frame the gang as terrorists after a bomb explodes in the Italian capital. Following the construction of these films, at least since Vin and The Rock broke up, it’s just a way to divide the crew. Roman, Tej, Ramsey, and Han ( Sung Kang ) flee to London, where they run into Shaw ( Jason Statham ), of course. Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) ends up captured, and only Mr. Nobody’s daughter Tess ( Brie Larson ) and Cipher ( Charlize Theron ) can get her out. And that crowded synopsis doesn’t even include John Cena , Jordana Brewster , Daniela Melchior , Helen Mirren , Rita Moreno , or Alan Ritchson . It’s a crowded street race of a blockbuster.

And yet all of these famous faces are given so little to do. The Roman/Tej banter has never felt more tired; Moreno & Mirren each get one “supporting Dom” scene that sounds like A.I. wrote it; Cena gets trapped with Perry on an awkwardly conceived and executed road trip; only Theron and Rodriguez get to have any real fun in their subplot, fighting it out in one of the film’s best combat scenes. For the most part, “Fast X” is the Dom & Dante Show, and the film is at its most effective when it bounces Diesel & Momoa’s very different screen personas off each other. Diesel seems more stoic than ever while Momoa plays to the back row, going for flamboyant psychotic with every scene. He’s like a giant child in a superhero’s body, sticking out his tongue and gleefully hopping into chaos with a “Here we go!”

“Fast X” opens with a repurposing of one of the most famous scenes in the franchise from “Fast Five,” only inserting a de-aged Momoa into the action that fans remember. It’s almost as if that inciting idea became the creative force behind the entire film. Someone listed the best action scenes on a whiteboard and then asked how the energy of Momoa’s Dante could shift them. Sometimes it works. A drag race scene in Rio captures that more grounded energy from when the series was actually about people driving fast instead of defying physics. There’s a plane dropping a car again and harpoons with wires on the end. Even when the goofy action is working, it’s hard to shake the sense that all of “Fast X” is an echo of something you’ve seen before, and often done better with a director who understands stunt work and action geography better than the mediocre Leterrier. It doesn’t help that “Fast X” often looks poorly rendered in CGI terms, with actors more obviously against green-screen backgrounds than before. It reduces the stakes when we're clearly watching something that’s more visual effects than stunt work.

All of this “rock band encore with new pyrotechnics” approach becomes even less forgivable because of where “Fast X” lands. Or rather doesn’t. Without spoiling, Diesel has revealed that this is the start of a franchise-ending trilogy, and that information probably leaked pre-premiere to soften the blow of a blockbuster with no ending. I’m talking “ Avengers: Infinity War ” level climax here. Characters are left presumed dead, in jeopardy, and still divided. This movie's race down memory lane goes arguably nowhere, forcing fans to wait for satisfaction. It makes “Fast X” into less of a victory lap than a loud, expensive revving of engines that haven’t even crossed the starting line. It just adds to the sense that this isn’t so much about family or fun as it is finances.

In theaters tomorrow, May 18 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Fast X (2023)

Rated PG-13

142 minutes

Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz

Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce

Ludacris as Tej Parker

Jason Momoa as Dante Reyes

Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey

Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto

John Cena as Jakob Toretto

Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw

Sung Kang as Han Lue

Alan Ritchson as Agent Aimes

Daniela Melchior as Isabel

Scott Eastwood as Little Nobody

Helen Mirren as Magdalene 'Queenie' Shaw

Charlize Theron as Cipher

Brie Larson as Tess

Rita Moreno as Abuelita Toretto

• Louis Leterrier

Writer (characters)

• Gary Scott Thompson

Writer (story by)

Cinematographer.

• Stephen F. Windon
• Kelly Matsumoto
• Dylan Highsmith
• Brian Tyler

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‘Fast X’ review: An unlimited adrenaline rush

Louis letterier directs vin diesel and his crew as they take on jason momoa’s villain..

Having driven all the way to the International Space Station in F9 , Fast X sensibly confines itself to the boundaries of Earth. The latest Fast & Furious movie is an unbridled, thrilling adrenaline rush that pushes humans, automobiles and action to the limit.

Franchise veteran Louis Letterier is firmly in charge of a film that has the responsibility of dreaming up imaginative ways to deliver high-octane stand-offs as well set up events for a sequel intended for 2025. Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), still harping away on the importance of family and friendship, is up against a new arch-enemy. His name gives an idea of this film’s Christian lite themes as well as the inferno that awaits Dom and his crew.

Dante (Jason Momoa) is fond of crocodile skin jackets and blowing things up. With a giggle borrowed from the unhinged Batman villains and a flamboyant style that places him on the spectrum of gender identity, Dante might have been cute if he wasn’t so hell-bent on vengeance. Momoa’s hilarious pirouetting puts the resident Fast & Furious clowns Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) to shame.

Events links back to the previous Fast & Furious films, especially the fifth edition. Dom’s adorable son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry) is now old enough to be introduced to The Legacy (Dom is big on this too). Nearly everybody from the previous movies is back, from Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw to Charlize Theron’s Cipher and John Cena’s Jakob.

Even Deckard’s mummy Queenie (Helen Mirren) isn’t left out. The new characters include Brie Larson as Mr Nobody’s daughter Tess and Alan Ritchson as Aimes, Mr Nobody’s replacement. Yet another F&F regular makes a return, while a mid-credits sequence has a surprise in store.

The stakes are higher – Dante is a formidable adversary – and the action is designed to stun. Among the miracles that take place across the globe-trotting plot is a globular bomb that wrecks much of Rome’s tourist strip and a vault strapped to a car that is weaponised to gobsmacking effect. Cars and a repurposed bobsled cover the distance between planes in the sky and the roads below without a care in the world. The 140-minute film lives up to its title: it’s ten times faster than its previous editions, and better than most of them too.

• Fast X review
• Louis Letterier

"This Time It’s Really Personal"

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Villain deceives and frames the good guys while he seeks revenge.

More Detail:

FAST X is a direct sequel to the FAST AND FURIOUS movie FAST FIVE, wherein the son of the Brazilian drug lord killed in FAST FIVE hatches an elaborate revenge plot against Dom and his friends and family, to make them suffer for what they did to his father. FAST X contains some new impressive action sequences, increases the personal stakes in the franchise by having the villain target the hero’s young son, and has overt references to faith and Jesus, but the amount of foul language is still slightly excessive, so extreme caution is advised.

The movie opens with a flashback to 10 years ago when Dom and his friends fought with a drug lord, Hernan Reyes, in Rio de Janeiro. The drug lord had killed some DEA agents, as well as agents from the Diplomatic Security Service Agency. So, Dom and his friends teamed up with two officers from “the Agency” to take $100 million in illicit money from Reyes that he placed in a large vault. Ten years later, the drug lord’s son, Dante Reyes, hatches an elaborate scheme to take revenge on Dom and his friends and family for his father’s death.

Cut to present day in Los Angeles. Dom and his friends and family are having some family time with Dom’s grandmother. The Agency calls Dom’s friends, Roman, Tej and Han, to travel to Rome to stop a powerful computer chip from getting into the wrong hands. While they’re away, Dom and his wife, Letty, get a visit from the escaped female cyberterrorist Cipher, who’s been seriously wounded by Dante. She tells them Dante tried to kill her and is after his friends in Rome.

Dom and Letty travel to Rome to warn their friends while Dom’s sister, Mia, takes care of Dom’s young son, Brian. They discover that the armored truck supposedly carrying the computer chip is actually carrying a bomb. With Dom in a fast car and Letty riding a fast motorcycle, they and the team try to stop the bomb from exploding in the center of Vatican City. Using a jamming device, they manage to steer the bomb into the nearby Tiber River, but the huge shock wave causes some damage.

However, the authorities capture Letty and accuse her, Dom and their friends of being the ones behind Dante’s terrorist attack. They send Letty to an unknown black site for interrogation. Sadly, Dom’s friend at the Agency, “Mr. Nobody,” is still missing, and the new man in charge, Ames, thinks it’s high time the Agency end its association with Dom’s team. So, Dom and his friends have to evade the authorities while they figure out a way to get Letty out of prison and stop Dante from killing them all.

Meanwhile, Dom’s brother, Jakob, arrives in Los Angeles and takes over their sister, Mia’s, duties protecting Dom’s son, Brian. Dom’s son is named after his friend, Brian, Mia’s husband, and Mia leaves to be with her husband, who’s trying to protect their own two children, who also will probably be targeted by Dante and his men.

How can Dom protect his son from the wrath of this mad avenger?

The transformation of the FAST & FURIOUS movies into a tentpole franchise about a team of fast-driving heroes battling super criminals began with FAST FIVE. As a direct sequel to that movie, FAST X not only doubles the mathematical number of the title, it also doubles down on the action. For example, in FAST FIVE, Dom uses his car to drag around a large vault containing the villain’s money. So, in FAST X, the villain’s son forces Dom to chase down and divert a large metal ball containing a bomb. The action sequence in Rome with the bomb is one of the most spectacular, entertaining sequences in the whole franchise.

As usual, the new FAST & FURIOUS movie promotes family, and friends are seen as part of the family. The movie also promotes sacrifice and honor. This time out, though, faith is linked overtly to the cherished cross necklaces that Dom and his brother, Jakob, received from their father. In the movie, Dom and Jakob pass down that symbolically Christocentric faith down to Dom’s son, Brian.

In contrast to the two brothers, the movie depicts the villain as an agent of chaos. Jason Momoa plays the villain as a sadistic, androgynous madman. As such, the character offers a well-deserved critique of the transgender subculture that’s waging a culture war today against Nature and Nature’s God. In fact, the villain makes a great contrast to the honorable masculinity and faith projected by Vin Diesel, the heroic icon behind the FAST & FURIOUS movies that’s made the movies so popular. MOVIEGUIDE® wonders if leftist critics will catch this apparent critique of modern-day attacks on traditional, biblical distinctions between male and female.

FAST X has significantly less foul language than recent FAST & FURIOUS movies, but it’s still slightly excessive and contains one “f” word and three strong profanities joining about 20 “s” and “h” obscenities. So, MOVIEGUIDE® still advises extreme caution.

FAST X ends on a cliffhanger, which leads to a sequel in 2025 that may be the second part of a trilogy (details are still sketchy).

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Tired fights, crashes, explosions in first of two-parter.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Consistently for the franchise, the theme here is

It's hard to consider the main characters role mod

Dom (Vin Diesel, who describes himself as "of ambi

Tons of over-the-top action violence, destruction.

Two characters kiss and caress each other. Women o

Sporadic uses of "s--t," "bulls--t," "goddamn," "b

Bottles of Corona beer. Characters play a Hot Whee

Social drinking: beers in a bar and at a barbecue.

Parents need to know that Fast X is the 10th official entry in the Fast and Furious franchise (not counting Hobbs & Shaw ), as well as the first half of a two-parter (it ends on a cliffhanger). It doesn't fully satisfy, but there are still enough wild stunts to keep fans eager to spend time with…

Positive Messages

Consistently for the franchise, the theme here is "family" -- although now the main goal is to protect your family from constant threats, rather than loving, enjoying, or appreciating them. And while there's definitely teamwork in play, much of it involves excessive violence without many consequences.

Positive Role Models

It's hard to consider the main characters role models, given the sheer, consequence-free destruction they cause, but they do risk their lives to save the world and protect their loved ones and stand up against impossible odds. And there's a lot of teamwork.

Diverse Representations

Dom (Vin Diesel, who describes himself as "of ambiguous ethnicity") is the clear leader. Other key cast members include Jason Momoa, who's Native Hawaiian, Native American, and Irish; Michelle Rodriguez, who's Dominican and Puerto Rican; Nathalie Emmanuel, who's of Dominican and Saint Lucian descent; Sung Kang, who's Korean; Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson, who are both Black; Daniela Melchior, who's Portuguese; and Rita Moreno, who's Puerto Rican. Women are smart and self-sufficient, but at least some of them are also objectified.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Tons of over-the-top action violence, destruction. Guns and shooting. Car crashes. Huge runaway bomb (on fire for a while). Missiles. Explosions. Characters die (off-screen). Fighting, martial arts. Characters slammed against hard surfaces. Stabbing. Some blood shown: scratches, bullet wounds, etc. Villain stabs a man, licks the blood from the blade. Eye-gouging. Villain "hangs out" with and talks to two corpses, dead bodies whose eyes and mouths have been propped open with tape. Characters crash through glass windows; character throws a handful of glass into another's face.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two characters kiss and caress each other. Women objectified: The camera leers at women's bottoms and legs as they dance. Villain paws at a young woman and licks her face. Sex-related dialogue ("the carpet matches the drapes").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sporadic uses of "s--t," "bulls--t," "goddamn," "bastard," "son of a bitch," "butthole," "oh my God," "damn." A young boy starts to say "shi-" twice but stops or is stopped.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Bottles of Corona beer. Characters play a Hot Wheels video game. Part of an extensive entertainment franchise.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking: beers in a bar and at a barbecue. A character eats a "fun muffin" and experiences brief LSD-like effects, which quickly go away.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Fast X is the 10th official entry in the Fast and Furious franchise (not counting Hobbs & Shaw ), as well as the first half of a two-parter (it ends on a cliffhanger). It doesn't fully satisfy, but there are still enough wild stunts to keep fans eager to spend time with Dom ( Vin Diesel ) and his found family. Violence is typical for the series, with nonstop over-the-top, cartoonish action mayhem. Expect guns and shooting, fighting, kicking, slamming, stabbing, car crashes, explosions, a runaway bomb, and more. Characters seemingly die (off-screen). The villain ( Jason Momoa ) stabs someone and licks the blood from his blade and also talks to two corpses he has propped up in chairs, with their mouths and eyes taped open. Sporadic strong language includes "s--t," "goddamn," "bastard," "bitch," etc. Two characters kiss and caress each other, and -- even though some of the movie's female characters are self-sufficient and smart -- there's objectification of women's bottoms and legs during a race. Adults drink beer socially, and a character eats a muffin that causes a brief LSD-like effect. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (11)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Pure Exellence is All I have To Say

Another great installment to one of the most well-known franchises, what's the story.

In FAST X, a new villain, Dante ( Jason Momoa ), emerges. He's seeking revenge on Dom ( Vin Diesel ) and everyone Dom loves because Dante blames Dom for the death of his father, Reyes, in Fast Five . Roman ( Tyrese Gibson ), Tej ( Ludacris ), Ramsey ( Nathalie Emmanuel ), and Han ( Sung Kang ) are called to go to Rome to steal a powerful computer chip, but the job is actually a trap set up by Dante. After a huge bomb is detonated, the team is made to look like terrorists, with Dom as their leader. They lose their protection from The Agency, and their bank account, too. Meanwhile, Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) is arrested and winds up in a secret prison, while Dom's brother, Jakob ( John Cena ), rushes Dom and Letty's son ( Leo Abelo Perry ) to a safe place. Now off the grid, the team must try to reunite, even as the sociopathic Dante seems to anticipate their every step.

Is It Any Good?

The 10th official movie in this wildly popular franchise -- the first of a two-parter -- has the same, now somewhat tired formula: travel, stunts, fights, explosions, crashes, "family" talk, repeat. In Fast X (the marketing team missed a chance to play with the phrase "Fast-Ten your seatbelt!"), the oft-repeated "family is everything" theme is now mostly about protecting your family and how much it hurts to lose loved ones (even though most of the characters who were once thought dead are actually alive). The stunts are bigger, of course, but they still seem derivative of past set pieces. And Momoa's Dante acts almost exactly like Batman's foe the Joker, dancing, giggling, wearing flouncy, clownish outfits, spouting endless one-liners, and behaving ghoulishly; it's all pretty shopworn. (Cena, on the other hand, offers some of the movie's warmest, funniest moments, playing the "cool uncle" in charge of protecting his nephew.)

While the movie occasionally, slyly makes fun of itself, that's not enough to break it free from its slavish devotion to the franchise's hit recipe. And after more than two hours, Fast X ends on a cliffhanger! Still, it's all so exhausting that even that may make you yearn not for more, but rather for a true and proper ending to this decades-long story.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Fast X 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it thrilling or shocking? Are there any consequences? Why does that matter?

How does this movie continue with the series' theme of family? How is this one similar to those that have come before it? How is it different?

How are women portrayed in the film? Did you notice any objectification? Agency? What messages does the movie's portrayal of its female characters send about women?

Do you consider any of the characters role models ? How can they be heroes if they're destroying millions of dollars' worth of property?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 19, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : August 8, 2023
• Cast : Vin Diesel , Jason Momoa , John Cena , Michelle Rodriguez , Tyrese Gibson
• Director : Louis Leterrier
• Inclusion Information : Multiracial actors, Indigenous actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors, Female actors, Latino actors, Black actors, Asian writers
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Cars and Trucks
• Run time : 141 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense sequences of violence and action, language and some suggestive material
• Last updated : April 15, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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As irredeemably silly as it is satisfyingly self-aware, Fast X should rev the engines of longtime fans while leaving many newcomers in neutral.

If you like your action fast and furious, you'll have fun with Fast X .

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‘fast x’ review: jason momoa makes a memorable villain in an action-stuffed franchise installment that’s for fans only.

Vin Diesel headlines a huge cast of new and familiar faces in this 10th film in the hugely successful, car-driven franchise, directed by Louis Leterrier.

By Frank Scheck

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The Fast and Furious movies may all be about fast cars, but the franchise has gotten so congested it’s a wonder they’re able to break the speed limit.

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Considering the amount of money these films have made for Universal, and the fact that the series has gone longer than many of its current viewers will have been alive, it’s hard to blame Vin Diesel and company for taking a victory lap. Or laps, as this supposed end to the franchise (please contact me about the bridge I’m selling) has recently been rumored to be the first of not two parts but three.

This edition provides more of what its fans have come to expect, and by “more” I mean “MORE.” As in: more characters, more stunts, more explosions, more chases, more locations, more everything. Thankfully, Fast X doesn’t venture into outer space, which should really be left to James Bond and Tom Cruise. The film also harkens back to its hardscrabble beginnings by featuring a mid-film racing scene between its main hero and villain for no apparent reason whatsoever. But then again, there’s always time in this cinematic universe for a totally extraneous street race.

The Fast franchise has gotten so convoluted that non-rabid fans should prepare to do serious homework before seeing this installment, directed by series newcomer Louis Leterrier ( The Transporter , Now You See Me ), who stepped in on short notice when original director Justin Lin backed out after coming to the conclusion that “this movie is not worth my mental health.”

That’s because Fast X is directly connected to that predecessor in that the main baddie in this one, Dante ( Jason Momoa ), turns out to be the son of the Brazilian drug kingpin killed by Dom Toretto (Diesel) and crew back in 2011. And don’t blame your memory if you don’t remember Momoa appearing in that elaborate chase on the bridge in that film. He’s been retconned into the footage to make it clear that Dante holds a very strong grudge over his father’s death. It seems that Dom isn’t the only one in this series who gets emotional over the loss of family members.

Momoa, it turns out, is one of the best things to ever happen to the franchise. He’s the best villain by far (not to mention that he does many of his own stunts) and thoroughly steals the film with his delightfully unhinged portrayal of Dante, who interrupts his nefarious activities to inform the ever-macho Dom that his “carpet matches the drapes.” Momoa is not exactly an actor associated with lightness, but here he practically dances the role as much as acts it, taking such frenetically gleeful delight in his character’s sadistic taunting that you practically root for him even when he threatens to destroy the Vatican. He gives the impression of having huffed nitrous oxide before every take. Dante makes the Joker look like a depressive, and he’s so damn entertaining that he lifts the series to new heights.

The core crew — including Michelle Rodriguez , Tyrese Gibson , Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, etc. — is back, except this time they’re divided into various groups scattered across the globe, the better to showcase locations including Rome, Lisbon and London, among others. (I assume the film didn’t actually shoot in Antarctica, where some scenes are set, but with this kind of money involved you never know.) Needless to say, most of these cities become the worse for wear from the experience, especially Rome, which suffers mightily as a result of an extravagant chase sequence and a massive bomb going off. With both this film and the upcoming Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning: Part One nearly laying the city to waste, it wouldn’t be surprising if skittish tourists avoid the Spanish Steps for a while.

Cena is another standout, displaying charm and solid comic chops in the numerous scenes in which Jakob protects Dom’s young son (Leo Abelo Perry, delivering perfectly calibrated wide-eyed stares) from Dante. This includes the pair escaping a passenger plane filled with bad guys by taking off in, what else, a smaller plane located in the cargo hold.

Twice in the film, giant lumbering objects ricochet through crowded city streets, wreaking absolute havoc in their wake. They’re perfect visual metaphors for the movies themselves, so stuffed with over-the-top mayhem and testosterone-fueled macho aggressiveness that they’ve become utterly ridiculous. What saves Fast X is that it’s so aware of its own absurdity that it becomes an entertaining parody of itself. Why else would one of the characters point out, “The real question is, How did we let this go on so long?” It seems a safe bet that this opening weekend’s grosses will provide enough of an explanation.  

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Fast X Parent Guide

Violent and incoherent, this film lumbers through its bloated run time with a ridiculous script and weak acting..

Theaters: Dom Toretto and his family face their most lethal opponent yet: the vengeful son of a drug kingpin they defeated years before.

Release date May 19, 2023

Run Time: 141 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by keith hawkes.

When Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) stole the vault from drug lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), they launched Reyes’ son Dante (Jason Momoa) on a quest for revenge. Living by his father’s advice to never let death suffice when suffering is owed, Dante sets out to destroy everything Dom loves most: His family.

After Dante frames Dom’s crew for a major explosion and high-speed car chase through Rome which nearly destroys the Vatican, Dom finds himself at the top of the international most-wanted lists. Separated from his friends and family (and hoping that they can stay out of Dante’s clutches), Dom must learn to work alone. Dante is a step ahead, though, and things are looking grim for anyone who ever helped Dominic Toretto.

Vin Diesel has mystified me for years. He has the emotional range, facial expression, and physical presence of the average refrigerator, but he’s somehow managed to leverage a large frame and gravelly voice into years of profitable work. That means that this movie relies on his co-stars to carry all the movie’s attempts at emotional weight. Weirdly, John Cena seems to be the most successful. His over-the-top pro wrestling chops are perfect for this juggernaut of a franchise. Jason Momoa has also opted for an approach with no subtlety whatsoever. He lands somewhere between Tim Curry in Rocky Horror and Heath Ledger as the Joker. If you can look past the teeth marks in the scenery, he might just be the highlight.

That said, being the highlight of a fire in a sewage processing plant isn’t a particularly high bar, and Fast X makes a heap of flaming human waste look like a real treat. It’s approximately a million years too long, and limps through that runtime with the weight of approximately four thousand named characters on its back. This franchise has been around for so long that the list of actors and characters associated is simply unmanageable. I don’t know who anyone but Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez are anymore, but I also cannot even begin to care. If you’re new to the franchise… good luck.

Adults looking for a coherent story will be disappointed but parents hoping for two and a half hours of distraction for their teens could, surprisingly, do worse than Fast X . The violence is all fairly goofy, and there’s not a whole ton of sex or swearing. One character does eat a “fun” muffin, but I couldn’t tell you what was in there. Something mildly hallucinogenic, at any rate. Aside from the violence, the rest of this film is more family suitable than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 , and honestly, marginally less irritating. Not that this is an endorsement. I had a crown put in at the dentist’s today, and that was a better experience than sitting through this film. It was much quicker, at any rate, although I’m not a fan of the price tag.

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Keith hawkes, watch the trailer for fast x.

Fast X Rating & Content Info

Why is Fast X rated PG-13? Fast X is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for intense sequences of violence and action, language and some suggestive material.

Violence: People are frequently involved in high-speed vehicle collisions which never seem to injure named characters, although they are presumably fatal for a lot of other drivers. People are also beaten, shot, stabbed, and blown up. Sexual Content: Some women in swimwear are seen dancing provocatively before a race. Profanity: There are 15 scatological curses and occasional use of mild profanities and terms of deity. Alcohol / Drug Use: Adult characters are briefly seen drinking socially. A character ingests a muffin laced with some kind of hallucinogen.

Page last updated May 18, 2023

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A far better option for high-octane misbehavior in automobiles is Mad Max: Fury Road , which also stars Charlize Theron. Although it earns its R-rating, Baby Driver has some of the most exciting and kinetic car chases in film. Director Louis Leterrier also directed Netflix’s French buddy-cop crime comedy The Takedown .

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fast X’ on Peacock, in Which Jason Momoa Makes a Floundering Franchise Even More Annoying

Where to stream:, dwayne johnson’s ‘red one’ reportedly delayed by his “chronically late” arrivals and unprofessional behavior: “it was a f****** disaster”, john cena on working with “alphas” vin diesel and the rock in ‘fast & furious’: “you get two, there can only be one”, vin diesel says he’s moving forward with final ‘fast and furious’ movie, can you smell when the rock is cooked dwayne johnson’s career is on the ropes.

Fast X ( now on Peacock , in addition to streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ) is the first of, god help us, a planned three-film mega-finale for a series that wore all the tread off its tires about three movies ago. THAT DOESN’T MEAN THIS NEW MOVIE IS BAD THOUGH, he said, convincing nobody, not even himself. This franchise’s M.O. is more more more, so this time, the already sprawling cast – call ’em a FAM’LY but only if you must – is freshened up with the addition of Jason Momoa as a wacky new villain, Rita Moreno as a great-grandma and Brie Larson as a wholly forgettable government agent. They join headliner Vin Diesel and everyone else, including Michelle Rodriguez, John Cena, Tyrese Gibson, Charlize Theron, Jordana Brewster, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Jason Statham, Dark Helmet’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate, Helen Mirren for some reason, Grumpy Cat (via archival footage), your mom and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver. Am I forgetting anyone (without letting any spoiler cats out of the bag)? Probably. I openly admit to walking into this movie with preconceived negative bias, which is partly due to director Justin Lin quitting the gig (he reportedly said the movie “isn’t worth my mental health”) and being replaced by director of too many B-minus movies Louis Leterrier, and also is the natural result of having mirthlessly endured the previous nine movies. Maybe I’m in the minority with that one (these movies do make a lot of dough), but for the life of me, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m immune to mass hypnosis or something.  

FAST X : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a repurposed sequence from (plumbs the decrepit depths of my memory; double-checks Wikipedia) Fast Five – you know the one, where Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his FAM’LY stole a big-ass safe from a bank in Rio de Janeiro by shooting it with harpoons on cables and dragging it behind their automobiles. TEN YEARS AGO, a subtitle blares. The money in that safe belonged to the Reyes family, and the insane violence that occurred in the wake of the heist resulted in the death of the patriarch – and the guy’s son has been really P.O.’d for a decade. His name is Dante (Momoa), and he’s just now finally executing his revenge scheme, which is so convoluted and covers all the angles and bases and thinks ahead so many steps, it should’ve taken two decades to concoct. 

But before we get to that, we catch up with Dom as he teaches his son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry), nickname Little B, how to drive. Well, not just to drive, but to leave smoldering rubber figure-eights on the pavement of a parking lot with Dom’s signature slate-gray Dodge Charger. The kid’s like, seven years old or something, but it’s never too early to learn how to tear ass. Tearing ass has saved Dom’s life dozens of times, as you’re all too aware. Then they gather for a barbeque with Dom’s wife Letty (Rodriguez) and Crew peeps Rej (Bridges) and Roman (Pearce) and Ramsey (Emmanuel) and Mia (Brewster) and Han (Kang), and also Dom’s grandma (Moreno), who arrives to deliver heavy-handed speeches about FAM’LY. Now we know where Dom gets it. 

That night, there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Cipher (Theron). Yeah, she’s a bad guy, but she’s in rough shape and she manages to talk Dom out of finishing the job. She got the tar walloped out of her by Dante and his goons, and she’s here to enlist Dom’s help – the enemy of my enemy, and all that. Thus begins the most overwrought snaking winding tangled pretzeled contortion of a revenge plot ever put to celluloid, one that busts up Dom’s crew for the whole damn entire movie, so consider that a warning (they’re prolly saving the big reunion for 12 Fast 12 Furious 12 , due somewheres around 2027). Roman and Ramsey and Han and Rej go to Rome for a gig only to learn it’s a trap, resulting in a maniacal chase sequence in which they barrel through the city in a Paw Patroller with Dante’s giant bomb in the back and Dom tears ass and Letty rips it up on her motorcycle and the bomb gets loose and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls like it was on top of spaghetti before it explodes and nearly destroys the Vatican, and the whole escapade wraps with Helen Mirren saying to Dom, “It ain’t no Roman holiday, and you ain’t no Gregory Peck” as they look upon the smoldering wreckage of Rome, to which I can only respond, good Christ .

This is all rather nuts, but par for the F/F course. It’s all downhill from here, I’m afraid. The plot eventually enlists Dom’s brother Jakob (Cena) to babysit Little B when he becomes Dante’s kidnapping target, and puts American gov’t agents Tess (Larson) and Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in the middle of the brouhaha, and rubber gets burnt from Yuma to Antarctica and many points in-between. There’s a great bit where Aimes sums up Dom’s crooks-turned-heroes crew by saying, “If it rejects the laws of god and gravity, they did it twice,” which is soon rendered a lie, because there’s a third and fourth and fifth time – at least – yet to come in this movie. And after that, it’ll cliffhang us and make us wait two years for some resolution.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Twenty-first-century action movie franchises, ranked:

1. John Wick

1a. Mission: Impossible

2. Planet of the Apes

163. Fast and Furious

Performance Worth Watching: So, so many paychecks being cashed here. But I will say Theron stands out as someone who takes this shit very seriously without taking it very seriously at all, if that makes sense, and Cena’s upbeat-goofball tone is disarming and funny. Between them, they draw a few effortless laughs in a movie that otherwise tongue-in-cheeks itself to death.

Memorable Dialogue: Cipher drops this doozy while still bleeding from Dante’s assault: “Fought the devil tonight. Honestly, I always thought it was me – kinda disappointing.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: All the Fast X hype’s been about Momoa’s nutty, out-there performance as the flamboyant villain, but remember, context is everything; in comparison to the other performances here, it’s definitely… different . Colorful. Campy in the opposite direction of Diesel, a true foil for Dom’s poker-faced man of few grunts, words and/or grunted words. Yet by any reasonable criteria outside the Fast and Furious bubble, Momoa’s grandstanding is annoying tryhardism that begs comparison to Johnny Depp’s more grating roles. It’s memorable for all the wrong reasons. Maybe some will find it amusing, but it’s just more sand in the jockey shorts of haters (he said, looking for the nearest bidet).

I understand why Leterrier and Momoa make the decisions they do, because it’s clear after nine noisy OTT action-smash outings, this series needs a shot in the arm. It peaked creatively a few movies ago and has since devolved into repetitive spectacle and something I like to call rampant franchiseism, where you need to know all the ins and outs of the previous films to comprehend the new one. If you’re not up to snuff, you either have to put in the work ahead of time or sit back and watch a nonsensical blur of faces and color and explosions. It ceases to be dumbass entertainment and becomes more stultifying than your 11th-grade teacher’s monotone lecture on The Agony and the Ecstasy . 

Structurally, Fast X consists of a handful of subplots that Leterrier tosses into the playground like marbles. They roll around here, and there: There’s the one where Dom ends up in a street race against Dante in Rio (a return to the series’ dopey-ass roots), the one where Letty wakes up in a secret prison next to Cipher, the one where Jakob and Little B ram around in a flying kayak, the one where Rej and Roman and Han and Ramsey fart around and end up reacquainting with an old frenemy, the one with Brie Larson and the other agent guy, the one with Mia that abruptly stops. Sometimes, the subplots turn up familiar faces from past movies, and eventually, a couple of them intertwine but never reach anything resembling a satisfying conclusion. Taking into account that Fast X isn’t a complete movie, but rather one-third of a larger whole yet to be finished, lack of resolution is a given, but getting to the to-be-continued dots-of-ellipsis ending should be more enjoyable. There’s one shot here in which Rodriguez’s motorcyclist stunt-double pulls off a badass maneuver – probably with the help of CGI, the visual lifeblood of this movie – that inspired a big laugh and broke me out of a stupor, but for the other two hours and 20-and-three-quarters minutes of this movie, I was bored out of my skull. 

Our Call: Out of gas. Spinning its tires. Stuck in the ditch. Slid too far off the road. Grinding its gears. Crashed and burning with one wheel spinning. Insert your automobile cliche here. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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‘Fast X’ Review: Massive ‘Fast & Furious’ Endgame Explodes Into View with an Outrageous New Villain

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Relying on homages to past stunts (like Diesel’s Dom Toretto driving out of a moving plane) and surprise appearances by long lost characters, the movie lays the groundwork for a possibly three-part finale (as Diesel has indicated) . Whether it has any new tricks up its sleeve still remains to be seen, though it’s unclear if that matters to its many diehard fans. Related Stories ‘Viet and Nam’ Review: This Spellbinding Drama Explores Young Romance — and History’s Ghosts ‘Gazer’ Review: A Mother’s Dyschronometria Hides Her Own Ticking Clocks in a Brilliantly Paranoid Debut

Following the mantra of go ginormous or go home, “Fast X” rallies its many disparate characters against a shared enemy. (Never mind that some of the more forgettable ones would have been better left alone.) Operating on the adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” this installment brings previous rivals together to stop a demonic psychopath who will stop at nothing to teach Dom the painful lesson that he can’t save everyone.

It must be gospel in Hollywood that every leading man reveres and studies Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning Joker performance, proven out by Jason Momoa’s outrageously flamboyant take on the aggrieved villain Dante. Often laughing maniacally at his own evil genius, Dante drives a purple car, and sports silk pants and purple nails, because: “It tones down the masculinity, which we all need these days.” This winking nod at shifting norms might be less complicated to enjoy if it wasn’t said while giving pedicures to a group of corpses. Instead, Universal is engaging in the oldest trick in the book, using flamboyance (read: queerness) to signal psychopathic supervillain. Pitted against the raging paternalism of Dom Toretto’s singular guiding purpose to protect his family at all costs, the moral edict is crystal clear.

Now 12 years old and able to sustain his own B-plot, Brian gets his own mini road movie while on the lam with Uncle Jakob (John Cena). Introduced as the tepid villain of “F9,” Dom’s long lost brother fits much more easily into the family as the good guy he was always meant to be. Tasked with keeping Brian safe, he and the kid set out on a charming little side adventure that offers a sweet diversion from the flashier antics. Cue adorable hijinks surrounding the nostalgic magic of mix tapes and lessons in swearing.

The same can’t be said for the other members of the extended family, though they certainly start things off with a bang. Running point on an operation in his namesake city Rome (a confusing choice), Roman (Tyrese Gibson) heads up the dream team of longtime favorites Tej (Ludacris), Han (Sun Kang), and recently introduced hacktivist Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). But the for-hire job ends up being a trap set by Dante in order to lure Dom to come to their rescue. When a truck of what they think is computer chips ends up carrying a massive bomb, suddenly a simple heist turns into a world-saving mission.

With their old CIA contact Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) mysteriously in the wind, Dom and the family find themselves the target of unsympathetic new boss Aimes (Alan Ritchson). Luckily, Dom is saved by a rogue agent determined to fulfill her father’s legacy, a cheerful but competent Brie Larson as his new CIA ally Tess. Defying her shifty new meathead of a superior Aimes, Tess tracks down Letty in a remote black-ops site, reuniting her with her old pal Cipher for an epic escape and survival plan.

With Dante’s fixation on proving to Dom that family isn’t forever, motivated by his back story, it’s only natural that the climactic battle end in an epic chase for Brian’s survival. Dom has to make some sacrifices along the way, but not before yet again landing a race car from a moving plane, and driving full speed down the side of a Hoover-sized dam. The action delivers, but the film ‘s third act suffers from an excess of set-ups, cameos, and minor deaths played up as major losses. After all, they have (at least) two more to go.

Universal Pictures will release “Fast X” in theaters on Friday, May 19.

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Review: 'Fast X' proves you really can have too much of a good thing

"Fast X" hits theaters dumber and more delicious than ever.

In defiance of gravity, logic and critical bashing, "Fast X" hits theaters dumber and more delicious than ever. But the thrill dissolves fast in the face of supercharged stupidity, paycheck acting and preposterous stunts. After 10 films in 22 years and a $6 billion box-office jackpot, "Fast X" slows down to a crawl as the runt of the "The Fast and the Furious" litter.

It had to happen, excitement giving way to age-related desperation. "Fast Five," still the bracing best of the bunch, put a tiger in the series tank by switching gears from illegal street racing in Los Angeles to a "Mission Impossible" ripoff where cars became peripheral to the global action.

MORE: Review: Review: 'The Super Marios Bros. Movie' is the next best thing to playing the game

In "Fast X," the drain of redundancy kicks in as king of the road Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) again takes the wheel. His extended family and crew is headed by Dom's wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and their son Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry) named after Brian O'Connor, the undercover cop and Dom bestie played by Paul Walker, who died in a car crash in 2013.

The plot? I couldn't find any, except it has something to do with an incident in "Fast Five," when Dom and Brian killed drug lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) in Rio de Janeiro, leaving his son Dante vowing to break Dom's family piece by piece. Ouch!

Since we never head of Dante in the previous films, it's a welcome if wacky surprise to see him turn up in the screen-filling, scene-stealing presence of Jason Momoa ("Aquaman") who turns his desire to see Dom suffer into a life-of-the-party tour de force.

Yeah, it makes no sense but Momoa revs up the movie with a full tank of deranged comic energy. He will also catch hell for indulging in flamboyant queer stereotypes. "I'm Dante, enchanté," he announces, claiming to "adore" surprises and dressed to wow in glitter shirts with rings and painted nails. Offensive or intentional sendup? You be the judge.

Diesel can't hold his own against the mountain of Momoa so he compensates by taking his stunts to a surreal limit whether he's using his wheels to drive down the wall of a dam or knock a bomb off course. That's way better than hearing him make speeches: "Without honor, you got no family. Without family, you got nothing!" Shut up, already.

Director Louis Leterrier, of two "Transporter" films, is new to the series, but can't seem to come up with anything new to shoot. That's why "Fast X" comes off like a greatest hits package so abbreviated that nothing resonates.

The A-list cast, notably Oscar winners Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron, Brie Larson and Rita Moreno, are in and out, though Theron and Rodriguez do have one kickass fight scene.

MORE: Review: 'The Woman King is indelible and truly inspiring

Otherwise, nearly everyone who has ever appeared in a "Fast" film makes a quickie cameo. Look, there's Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) as pawns in Dante's plot to set up Dom and his crew as terrorists.

Others like Jason Statham, John Cena, Sung Kang and Jordana Brewster come and go so fast that they should be furious. Pete Davidson is also in there somewhere for whatever reason.

Jamming in everything would be more forgivable if the 10th time around was meant to be a fond farewell. Hell, no. Studios don't willingly kill a golden goose. Intended as the first half of a two-part franchise finale, plans now are to stretch it into a trilogy, and "Fast X" ends with a cliffhanger instead of a victory lap -- proving that you really can have too much of a good thing.

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Fast X review: This franchise is running out of gas

Whenever the newest chapter of the Toretto family saga isn't coasting off the past glories of Fast Five, it's desperately trying to be a superhero movie.

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

Anyone sitting down to watch Fast X is surely a fan of Fast Five … or at least, that's what the makers of the newest installment are counting on. The 2011 blockbuster still stands as the peak of this franchise, the one that turned things up a notch by uniting all the stars from the disparate first four Fast & Furious films into a globe-trotting Avengers-like super-team. The four sequels since then, alas, have gotten more than a little repetitive with their constant cyber-heists and celebrity cameos, so Fast X begins by trying to remind fans of past glories.

The new film from director Louis Leterrier literally reuses footage from the climax of Fast Five , where Dominic Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) and pals stole a bank vault by dragging it through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. This time, new character Dante Reyes ( Jason Momoa ) is clumsily inserted in the background. He's the son of Fast Five antagonist Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), you see, and was there the whole time! This is a cheap way to make a new villain seem menacing and meaningful. Though having Momoa glower and grimace through one of the high-octane highlights of 2010s action cinema is not quite as sacrilegious as Ghostbusters: Afterlife digging up the CGI ghost of Harold Ramis, it's definitely annoying.

It would be one thing if Fast Five director Justin Lin were at the helm, as he was originally supposed to be after returning to the franchise for 2021's F9 , but Lin mysteriously dropped out as director of Fast X less than a week into filming. That makes the recycled footage feel a bit too much like stealing valor by ripping off the work of a master action filmmaker to make this less-stellar successor seem more important.

In any case, the plot of Fast X (out this weekend) follows Dante's revenge scheme against Dom for killing his father. This isn't "eye for an eye," though; Dante believes that he should "never accept death when suffering is owed." So rather than kill Dom, Dante seeks to hurt him by targeting his beloved family that you've heard so much about. First introduced in 2017's The Fate of the Furious , Dom's son Brian Marcos has grown from a baby into a young teenager (Leo Abelo Perry) who's inherited his dad's love of cars. Naturally, he is Dante's primary target.

Momoa plays Dante like a flamboyant Disney villain, which is a cute change of pace but fits uneasily in the world of the movie. No question this franchise is silly — remember when Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) went to space in the last one? — but having one character constantly ridiculing the others and making mockery of everything feels maybe a little too on-the-nose.

After that opening retcon flashback, Fast X employs another tired cliche to artificially inflate Dante's menace. Within minutes, the franchise's former top villain Cipher ( Charlize Theron ) shows up at Dom's door, beaten and bloodied, to moan about how Dante is "the devil" and way worse than she ever was. Okay.

Fast Five 's main competitor for "best 2010s action film centered on cars" was Mad Max: Fury Road , so it made sense to slot that movie's star into this franchise starting with The Fate of the Furious . Yet it's alarming how little they've utilized the greatest action star of our time . After two movies of mostly sitting around in glass boxes and performing hand-wavey feats of "hacking," Theron finally gets a couple Atomic Blonde -worthy fistfights in Fast X , but the actress who played Imperator Furiosa still hasn't been allowed to drive a car. What's that about?

Dante isn't the only new character introduced for Fast X , either. Reacher star Alan Ritchson arrives as Aimes, who has taken over the spy agency once led by Kurt Russell 's Mr. Nobody but is a lot less friendly to Dom and pals than his former boss. Brie Larson , meanwhile, shows up as Mr. Nobody's daughter Tess, who does want to help the Toretto crew. With so many faces new and old squeezed into one 142-minute runtime — we should also mention that another former villain, Jakob Toretto ( John Cena ), is back in a more heroic role — it's hard to get a handle on who exactly Tess is or why we should care about her. There sure are a lot of references to the absent Mr. Nobody, though.

It doesn't help that one of Tess' introductory scenes is set in a biker bar, which feels a little too much like a similar scene from Captain Marvel . In fact, whenever Fast X isn't trying to coast off the highs of Fast Five , it's desperately trying to be a superhero movie. Dom spends most of the movie trying to save lives, which is always nice, but at one point he literally deflects a hail of bullets with a car door like it's Captain America's shield.

Several moments are so reminiscent of Christopher Nolan 's Batman movies that they feel intentional. Fast X 's first action setpiece involves Dom trying to save a city from a gigantic bomb like the one that threatens Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises . When one character pleads "you've done everything you could," Dom even replies "not everything." You can practically hear Christian Bale 's voice completing the quote with "...not yet." Later, Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez ) tries to break out of an underground prison fortress like she's scaling Bane's pit. It's these seemingly serious stakes that sit oddly alongside Momoa's over-the-top campiness. Are we supposed to feel threatened, or is it all just in good fun? Why so serious, Dom?

Obviously our culture is drowning in superhero movies, so it's hard for other stories to escape their gravitational pull. But one nice thing about the Fast franchise used to be how it could deliver a similar type of blockbuster spectacle as the Marvel Cinematic Universe while also doing something distinctly different. Those lines have now blurred, and Fast X has even echoed the most annoying aspect of the superhero genre: The endless serialized storytelling. "The end of the road begins" is a fitting if nonsensical tagline for the new film, because it literally ends on a cliffhanger. Fast X wants all the grandiosity of finality while not actually ending anything. Grade: C

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Related content:

• Fast X director suggests more movies after Part 2: 'Many roads will lead us to the end'
• Fast X sneak peek reveals what happens after Han confronts Shaw in F9 mid-credits scene
• 10 years later, Fast Five is still the rock of the franchise

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‘Fast X’ Review: Drivers Wanted. Again.

Twenty-two years and nine sequels in, the “Fast and Furious” franchise is finding it hard to keep the thrill alive.

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By Wesley Morris

So much has gone over the top in these “Fast and Furious” movies — stunt work and demolition, obviously; but also family trees, racing, race , plots, pates, biceps, upper backs — that it wasn’t until I saw what Jason Momoa was up to in this new installment, “Fast X,” that I realized how much the acting had stayed under the table. He swoops in to play a flamboyant terrorist named Dante Reyes. And it’s pretty clear, from the pitiful quips he’s been given and the light-loafer treatment he’s going for, that the mustache Momoa’s twirling isn’t his. It’s Rip Taylor’s.

For half a century, Taylor ran all over American TV in a hail of confetti that he threw for himself. He didn’t act. He made appearances. That’s how Momoa operates here, showing up wherever the movie needs him (on patio furniture, at the top of the Aldeadávila Dam ) in lavender and snakeskin and billowing everything, horny to blow something up. These movies have been out of good ideas since “Furious 7” eight years ago , mired in government-flavored tug-of-wars over hacking, surveillance and tech. And Momoa’s here to zhuzh things up. So along with Taylor’s mustache, Momoa twirls himself. It’s like watching an overcup oak go trick-or-treating as a Christmas tree.

And yet, even though he destroys the Spanish Steps of Rome with alacrity and purrs lines like, “I know what you’re thinking. And yes: the carpet matches the drapes,” it’s not zhuzh-y enough. Momoa is giving the Joker. But Cesar Romero’s. Of course, he’s the only person here committed to clear and present lunacy, going for post-macho chill, refashioning the quote marks around him into neck pillows.

Five movies and a dozen years ago, Dom (Vin Diesel) and the gang trashed favelas in Rio de Janeiro and killed Dante’s drug-lord father (along with scores of innocent Brazilians, but we’re not going there today). Now, with the series at the bottom of its barrel, Dante wants revenge. This means sending a giant bomb barreling toward the Vatican. He doesn’t quite pull that off, but his wish comes true to make wanted terrorists of Dom and the rest of the gang, creating a rift between them and the feds they covertly work for and spoiling the driving lessons Dom had been giving to his 8-year-old son, Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).

There are about five intersected plot lines, credited to Justin Lin and Dan Mazeau (the director Louis Leterrier replaces Lin as mayhem manager). Dom on the run; Dom’s brother, Jakob (John Cena), babysitting Brian (they’re on the run, too); some of Dom’s crew — Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Han (Sung Kang) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) — all but backpacking through Europe; Dom’s wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), arrested and locked up alongside the crew’s cyberterrorist nemesis, Cipher (Charlize Theron); and the two feds, Aimes (Alan Ritchson) and Tess (Brie Larson), at odds with each other over whether to aid or apprehend the “F&F” gang. And just about every strand stems from Dante’s pique and gets left as a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved until years from now in, what, “Fast X+1”?

The best I can say about all of this is that it didn’t bore me. But this is a series that, by the time its fourth and fifth installments arrived, had merged the original movie’s casually erotic, multiethnic, omni-racial car culture with the “can’t top that” set pieces of Hollywood summer movies. It wasn’t that that fusion was never boring. It had the thrill of newness. How many times have I laughed, in awe, at what this series could do with all kinds of vehicles and the people behind them. It insisted that a universe of nonwhite folks could meet the priorities of blockbuster filmmaking and still rake up money around the globe. And it was exciting to see who they could enfold into that agenda (Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell).

We’re talking about 22 years and nine sequels, though. Stacking the rotation with two former professional wrestlers, four Oscar winners (Rita Moreno gets jammed in here as Dom’s grandmother) plus Aquaman no longer feels like radical popular-culture inclusion. It feels both defensive and greedy: Can the Avengers top that ? From an industrial standpoint, it does expose how much less gonzo our movies are now. What other franchise would’ve had the nerve to imagine Statham as Mirren’s son? To put Diesel in Moreno’s arms, Larson’s good graces and Theron’s cross hairs?

There’s a charitable, cash-free reason nobody wants these things to end. Despite Paul Walker’s having been dead for a decade, in these movies, his character, Brian O’Conner, is still alive, still married to Dom’s sister, still a dad, still living on a beach somewhere. The opening minutes of “Fast X” reimagine the death of Dante’s daddy in “Fast 5” and therefore grant the film an excuse to reanimate Walker. It just strains credulity that Brian would be sitting idle now while his homies face extinction. But that’s an implication of what these movies are asking us to believe, that his wife, Mia (Jordana Brewster), is more down for the defense of their family than he is. So letting this series go means letting Walker go, too. But that sentimentality leaves these movies with nowhere to go but up its own annals. (Well, there is Antarctica, the funniest of the datelines here.)

Instead, we get the wrong kind of chaos. You can see it in the incoherence of the driving — and there’s not enough of that, either. Which means wasting the series’s lead actor and flame-keeper. These movies used to know what they had in Vin Diesel. Put him behind the wheel of anything, and he’s a star. The cameras in “Fast X” are too busy to truly take in all the furrowing, the glints, the scowls. He’s not much of a husband, lover, father or mastermind in these movies, but give his foot a gas pedal and suddenly the man can act. His best moments in “Fast X” involve that stuff at the Vatican. He seems to mean it. Dom’s enormous crucifix isn’t an accessory. It’s a promise. But later, when he’s pulling two charred helicopter husks behind him, Diesel’s lack of concern concerned me. The thrill is gone.

It’s not there in the sequence in which that ball-bomb eats a chunk of Rome or any of the many, many shootouts and fistfights. Not even in the brawl Rodriguez and Theron endure that should have killed both of their characters. Visually, it’s as messy as a lot of the sequences in “Fast X.” It’s hard to care about a fight you can’t follow or be bothered to suspend disbelief for. That’s the true death knell for this series: rationalism, nit-picking, disillusionment. ( Why can’t Brian come out and play? )

The series doesn’t need Momoa’s vamping. The camp was always coming from inside the garage, the way these movies operated in defiance of physics, chronology, narrative logic and DNA. Their subject was criminals conflicted about going legit. Now they’re practically a government agency, out protecting the planet — and they’re so far through the moral looking glass that everybody looks too comfortable. There’s a reason the movies’ insistence on family starts to feel laughable. It makes us feel like we’re at Olive Garden. Their dumbness made them important. Now, self-importance has made them dumb. Characters are now explaining these movies to each other — and where great, big, bronzed Aimes is concerned, man splaining them. They’re saying stuff like, “It’s like a cult with cars,” “The fallout will be existential” and “This family has gotten their hands dirty to keep ours clean.”

These movies used to know what about them was ridiculous. They’d give that to us until our hearts broke the speed limit. But I’ve already seen Diesel drive at a 90-degree angle before. The old bravado currently reeks of formula. The nerve is shot. There was a time when this series would have had Dante send a pair of balls hurtling toward the Vatican.

Fast X Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hour 21 minutes. In theaters.

Wesley Morris is a critic at large and the co-host, with Jenna Wortham, of the culture podcast “Still Processing.” He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for criticism, including in 2021 for a set of essays that explored the intersection of race and pop culture. More about Wesley Morris

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REVIEW: “Fast X” (2023)

While none of us can make sense of their hilariously arbitrary titles (“Fast Five”, “Fast & Furious 6”, “Furious 7”, “The Fate of the Furious”, “F9”, etc.), one thing is for sure – the Fast and Furious movies have fully embraced what has made the franchise such a hit. Since taking a dramatic turn in 2011 with its fifth installment, the series has grown into one of the most expense and most profitable popcorn franchises in big screen history.

The latest chapter is “Fast X” and it’s being advertised as the first film in a possible trilogy that will bring the adrenaline-fueled saga to an end (it even sports the tagline “ the end of the road begins “). Vin Diesel returns as the series centerpiece Dominic Toretto. Pretty much everyone else is back as well for this $340 million last ride.

“Fast X” doesn’t do anything to break the mold. So if you like the previous movies this one will deliver the same over-the-top, fuel-injected action spectacle you’ll be looking for. The reverse is also true. If you didn’t care for the other films in the franchise there’s nothing new in “Fast X” that will suddenly win you over. Well maybe Jason Momoa who plays the story’s giddily diabolical antagonist. He’s a blast and goes for broke in delivering a villain like none other we’ve seen in the franchise.

“F9” was a little wobbly with several nagging issues keeping it from living up to expectations. Still it had the crazy set pieces and most (not all) of the characters we have grown to love. As you might guess, “Fast X” amps up nearly everything. It’s not as distractingly absurd as “F9”, but it still features the franchise’s signature reality-defying action and it miraculously finds time to give everyone some meaningful moments. It’s pure fan food, made from start to finish with fans in mind.

One thing is for sure, “Fast X” is far from a standalone movie. In fact you’re guaranteed to have more questions after the movie than you did at the start of it. Director Louis Leterrier, working from a screenplay by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin, puts a lot of things in motion and their cliffhanger ending leaves several loose story threads dangling. But that’s okay for a tale of the size and scope.

Diesel gives one of his better performances of the series, portraying Dom as both tough-as-nails yet vulnerable. He loves his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his young son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry) more than anything else and he has worked so hard to keep them and his extended family safe. But the constant worry is clearly taking an emotional toll on him.

But once again the past comes back to haunt Dom. This time its in the form of the flamboyant and maniacal Dante Reyes (a hysterical and unnerving Momoa). He’s the son of Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), a violent drug kingpin who was killed during 2011’s “Fast Five”. Dante is intent on paying back the man he holds responsible for killing his father and stealing their family fortune – Dominic Toretto. And what better way than by taking away what’s dearest to Dom – his family.

Of course in the Fast & Furious movies family isn’t just blood kin. It also includes loyal friends like Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Han (Sung Kang), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster) and his little brother, Jakob (John Cena) also find themselves in the mix. That’s a lot of people to protect and the sadistic Dante knows it. So he hatches a meticulously crafted plan aimed at separating Dom’s loved ones and luring them all across the globe. Not even Dom can be five places at once. So the danger ratchets up and the personal stakes get higher and higher.

As the story takes shape Leterrier ushers us around the globe, making stops in London, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Portugal, and Antarctica among others. At each stop we meet old friends like Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) and some old enemies like Cipher (Charlize Theron). And there are plenty of new faces as well played by the likes of Brie Larson, Daniela Melchior, and Alan Ritchson. Yes, it’s a massive cast.

By the end it feels like this final story is only getting started. We’re left shocked by certain outcomes, wondering about certain fates, and curious for what lies ahead. And what can I say – I enjoyed the ride. Even more, Diesel and company did their job of leaving me genuinely looking forward to the next film. As with all the FF movies you have to endure a rather large amount of silliness, and buying into some of the plot machinations can be a challenge. Those are baked-in issues that have been around for years.

But the franchise freed itself from the restraints of reality a long time ago. “Fast X” is openly self-aware yet it has an undeniably big heart. And Momoa brings a blithely psychotic energy that you can’t turn away from. It’s hard to get a good read on the film since so much is left for later. But the movie sets the table well, all while delivering just the kind of big budget popcorn entertainment it advertises. In the end, it’s hard to knock it too much for being exactly what its fans want it to be. “Fast X” is now showing exclusively in theaters.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

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18 thoughts on “ review: “fast x” (2023) ”.

Sounds like a good plot for this franchise. Dom’s got his work cut out for him. Glad Cena is back as Jakob. I wondered if he would be in the next one.

Pretty much the whole gang is back (kinda) with a few new people added. I enjoyed it. But it is truly made for the fans.

I feel like I’d enjoy this, but can’t be doing with starting a 10 flick franchise now and I think one would have had to see the previous to get all the nuances. (If there are any 🙂 )

They left nuance behind a long time ago.

Haha ok, thanks.

Start at Fast Five and you’ll be good. 👍🏼

I watched, or tried to watch, F9 a couple of weeks. I never got engaged with it – noisy, phony, whatever the plot was I just wasn’t interested in. The phrase about “jumping the shark” came to mind, although I think it was more like jumping a whale.

F9 certainly has its issues. I still enjoyed it, but it’s not among my favorites.

I’ll wait for this on TV though I need to catch up on the last one which I haven’t seen. I heard Rita Moreno is in the film as Grandma Torretto. When are we going to get Meryl Streep as Brian’s mama? Come on! We know she’s overdue to be in a franchise like this and we know that Meryl Streep is…. $$$$$$$

Rita Moreno and Helen Mirren. They’re both a hoot.

a three-part conclusion? Are you kidding me?

lol what are they going to do with the middle section there — like how is that differentiated from just another Chapter in the whole saga. This is absolute nonsense.

I do believe there might be a gameplan with this one. Where each of the other films have had pretty tidy endings, this one clearly has a bigger story in mind. And I think I see how the three films might be segmented.

We’ll see if it all comes together in a way that feels the slightest bit meaningful.

Sounds like fun. All the others I’ve loved to hate and keep going back for a super adrenaline rush.

I’m guessing this will slide right into that same lane for you. My daughter went with me to see it and we had a blast.

Pingback: “Fast X” Speeds to the Top of the Weekend Box Office | Keith & the Movies

Can’t wait for Dante to be part of the family in the final movie.

LOL. Somehow I think he has went beyond their very forgiving spirit. But you know….family.

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Dom Toretto and his family are targeted by the vengeful son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes. Dom Toretto and his family are targeted by the vengeful son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes. Dom Toretto and his family are targeted by the vengeful son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes.

• Louis Leterrier
• Michelle Rodriguez
• Jason Statham
• 1.2K User reviews
• 247 Critic reviews
• 56 Metascore
• 2 wins & 13 nominations

• Dominic Toretto

• (as Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges)

• Little Nobody

• Little Brian
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The word family is said 56 times in this film.
• Goofs Lifts cannot fail in the way shown. The instant the tension in the cables drops the brakes engage and the car is then held in place by it's own weight. The lift would have dropped a few feet at most and more likely only inches.

[from trailer]

Cipher : [waking up on operating table alongside Letty] Good morning, sunshine.

Letty Ortiz : You gotta be kidding me.

• Crazy credits SPOILER: A mid-credits scene shows a special forces team entering a theater, finding a video message from Dante Reyes announcing another target for his revenge: even though Dominic Toretto injured his father, it was Luke Hobbs who finally shot and killed him. It is then revealed that it is Hobbs who is leading the team and watching the message, stating that he is ready to take on Dante Reyes.
• Connections Edited into Fast X: Gag Reel (2023)
• Soundtracks 9 in My Hand (Fast X Remix) Written by Key Glock (as Markeyvius Cathey), Kordhell Performed by Kordhell & Key Glock Produced by Kordhell Kordhell appears courtesy of Artist Partner Group, Inc./Black 17 Media Key Glock appears courtesy of Paper Route Empire

User reviews 1.2K

• May 22, 2023
• How long is Fast X? Powered by Alexa
• May 19, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Aksiyon Filmleri
• Film Sözlük
• Fast & Furious 10
• A24 Highway AKA Autoestrada do Interior Norte, Portugal (A24 Highway, Portugal)
• Universal Pictures
• China Film Co., Ltd.
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $340,000,000 (estimated)
• $146,126,015
• $67,017,410
• May 21, 2023
• $704,875,015

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 21 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos

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‘Fast X’ Is Even More Ridiculous and Exhausting Than You Think

WE’VE HAD ENOUGH

Choose your cliché: The franchise is running out of gas! It’s spinning its wheels! It’s stuck in neutral!

Nick Schager

Entertainment Critic

Universal Pictures

Fast & Furious is one of Hollywood’s all-time most lucrative franchises. It is also one of its dumbest, and that inanity continues apace—by which I mean, at breakneck speed—with Fast X , the tenth (!) chapter in what has become a monument to absurd action-extravaganza excess, laughable platitudes about family, and Vin Diesel ’s superhero-sized ego.

It’s additionally a summer-season series that allows myriad actors not on the Marvel and DC payrolls (and a handful who are!) to earn blockbuster salaries, which is about the only excuse for the majority of these individuals to be wasting their talents on such nonsense.

It's been 12 years since Fast & Furious remade itself from a saga about street racing into some sort of bizarre quasi- Mission: Impossible rip-off, with Diesel’s Dominic Toretto reimagined as an invulnerable badass who works for a covert government agency (known as, ahem, The Agency) to thwart dastardly international criminals.

That transformation never made sense, but from 2011’s Fast Five on, the franchise’s celebration of multicultural unity and vehicular outrageousness has helped obscure its baseline illogicality. Even so, the finish has begun to wear off, peaking with F9 ’s decision to send Ludacris’ Tej and Tyrese Gibson’s Roman—comedic foils who’ve yet to utter a legitimately funny word in eight movies—into space via a rocket-propelled roadster, which felt like a move designed to preempt any parodies about the dim-bulb lengths to which these films will go to one-up their predecessors.

Fast X features no flights to the stars, nor similar instances of heroes doing ridiculous things like redirecting fired rockets with their bare hands à la Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in The Fate of the Furious . Nonetheless, there’s plenty of preposterousness to be found in this sequel, which barely revs to life when indulging in automotive mayhem and outright stalls every time its human characters open their mouths. No matter which cliché you choose—the series is running out of gas/spinning its wheels/stuck in neutral—Dom and company’s latest exploits are perhaps their most exhaustingly “extreme” to date, not to mention their dimmest.

Turning inward on itself to a ludicrous degree, Fast X begins with a prologue that retcons Fast Five , revealing that when Dom and Brian (Paul Walker) dragged drug lord Hernan Reyes’ (Joaquim de Almeida) vault through Rio de Janeiro (killing the baddie in the process), they gravely injured the villain’s heretofore-unknown son Dante (Jason Momoa). Ten years later, Dante reemerges, intent on fulfilling his dad’s wish that Dom suffer before he dies for this theft.

Why Dante waited a full decade to exact his revenge is never properly explained, but logic isn’t these proceedings’ strong suit. Neither, it turns out, is action, this despite director Louis Leterrier giving it his best over-the-top shot, employing an abundance of zooming, soaring, whooshing camerawork in an effort to keep the energy high. All that sound and fury, alas, feels tired and desperate, and the fact that Leterrier recycles a knocking-a-bomb-off-a-car’s-undercarriage trick from his Transporter 2 only underlines his lack of imagination.

Virtually everyone who’s appeared in a prior Fast & Furious film pops up here, and none of them look particularly thrilled about it. Ludacris and Tyrese half-heartedly engage in ball-busting banter, Jason Statham flashes a few grimaces, John Cena does his earnestly goofy routine, and Scott Eastwood and Brie Larsen (the latter playing the daughter of Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody) blankly glare during their brief screen time.

As Dom’s beloved Letty, Michelle Rodriguez snarls and yells per tradition, and Reacher ’s Alan Ritchson struts around in shirts that are two sizes too small, the better to show off his massive frame. Charlize Theron mostly plays exhausted as super-cyber-criminal Cipher, while Sung Kang looks downright miserable as resurrected Dom pal Han. Even Helen Mirren and Jordana Brewster do some drive-by work, the latter in a scene that asks us to believe that the physically slight actress is capable of taking down a cadre of heavily armed soldiers.

There are so many cameos and callbacks littered throughout Fast X that its story feels secondary. That turns out to be a good thing, since Dante’s plot—killing everything Dom loves, most notably his son Brian (Leo Abelo Perry)—is a drawn-out affair in which the fiend gives Dom every opportunity imaginable to escape harm.

Momoa is the only one who seems to be having any fun, although there’s a debate to be had about whether his brazenly queer-coded performance (all hip-thrusting, brightly painted fingernails, ornate rings, shimmering shirts, chitchat about masculinity standards, and pronouncements like “I’m Dante, au chante!” and “The carpet matches the drapes!”) is colorful or distasteful. Either way, it’s still more tolerable than writers Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin’s third grade-level dialogue. Every utterance is a trailer-tailored bromide (“Sometimes fear can be the best teacher;” “Without honor, you got no family. Without family, you got nothing!”; “The fallout will be existential!”) and, moreover, worse than the last.

Diesel himself glowers, bellows, and poses with typical He-Man-ish confidence, his Dom now so thoroughly rendered a cartoon that his impossible feats (knocking a flaming bomb off-course with his car; plummeting from a plane in his Dodge, and then driving down the wall of a dam) are less awe-inspiring than awfully dull.

Dom’s invincibility neuters any suspense, just as Fast X ’s overpopulated plot shortchanges everyone. It’s a film that’s content to simply put new spins on old centerpieces, and the brief sound of a Harry Potter musical theme only exacerbates the sense that Leterrier’s installment is a retread designed to keep the IP afloat regardless of whether there’s anything novel left to do with these characters, their soap opera entanglements, or their turbo-charged vehicles.

Intended as the first half of a two-part franchise finale (which may now become a trilogy, God forbid), Fast X closes on a monumental cliffhanger. However, given that there’s zero chance its main characters (save for one) are in serious danger of meeting their maker, it proves to be one more affected gesture in a fiasco stuffed full of them, be it sight of Dom crying over a deceased love, wistfully gazing at old photos of himself and Walker’s Brian, or clutching his crucifix as a means of expressing his deep (and oft-referenced) faith. Bloated, listless and unintentionally hilarious, it’s a spectacular wreck.

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'Anora' Review: Sean Baker’s Biting Thriller Is Spectacular | Cannes 2024

Mikey Madison is absolutely magnificent in this dynamic and devastating look at modern class exploitation.

The Big Picture

• Anora tackles class exploitation in a darkly comedic tone, encapsulating the fundamental cruelty baked into our world.
• The film portrays the harsh realities of modern labor, highlighting the never-ending struggle just for basic stability.
• Sean Baker and Mikey Madison are each operating in complete sync, creating a shattering and poetic parable on exploitation that reveals the cold realities of our world.

Sean Baker ’s latest feature, the thrilling and darkly comedic Anora , is about a great many things, with an outstanding breakout performance from Mikey Madison , but, at its core, it’s about class exploitation. Though it touches on things the filmmaker has explored before, be it the vulnerability of everyday people living in proximity to poverty in The Florida Project or the way those with smiling faces can take advantage of others for their own gain in Red Rocket , it proves to be his most searing, shattering work to date . Without ever losing its comedic edge, it morphs into one of the most honest yet heartbreaking portraits of the fundamental brokenness of our modern world. It’s as dynamic as it is dread-inducing, pushing things further and further until there is nothing left but the reality that whoever we think may win in this battle of wills surrounding a marriage, this is a game built so all of us end up losing.

Anora (2024)

Anora's life takes an unexpected turn when she marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, seemingly securing a dreamlike escape from her struggles in Brooklyn. However, her fairytale is short-lived as the oligarch's parents arrive with plans to annul the impulsive union. Through a blend of dramatic and comedic moments, the film explores the intersections of class, love, and identity, set against the vibrant and often harsh backdrop of urban life.

While life has always been defined by the rich using up the value of the poor and then casting them aside, the most devastating part of Baker’s vision comes in witnessing the lack of solidarity being formed. Even as this could change things on a structural level, compassion and class solidarity are in short supply as, despite being united by our collective precarity, we all are often fighting for scraps rather than coming together. This is all played with a delicate yet no less devastating hand, never judging those who are failing to support each other, and instead mourning the fact that we all are being pitted against each other while the wealthy always continue to come out on top. As the world burns and we all struggle to get by, Anora is a clear-eyed indictment of the way the structures of society have calcified into cruelty , while those who get something sell out the people they should be uniting with. Whether it’s Baker’s best is hard to say, as he’s made many excellent films, but none as unflinching as this.

What Is 'Anora' About?

This begins with an excellent opening sequence where we get to know the charismatic and clever Ani (Madison) as she goes about her day in New York City. She is a sex worker who is scraping by, working long hours before taking the subway home to crash before waking up to do it all over again, day after day. She is the face of modern labor in America . Much like the underrated recent film Hustlers , Anora takes us into the reality of stripping and sex work as a job that most other movies often use as background noise. We see how Ani, whose real name is Anora, can’t ever seem to get out from under the crushing forces of inequality that keep in her place. No matter how hard she works, how good she is at her job, or how valuable her labor is to people, it never manages to be enough for even a moment of peace.

She has no healthcare, no union, and no stability. Thus, it seems like she may have caught a break when the imbecilic young Ivan ( Mark Eydelshteyn ) walks into the strip club where she works. Ani is called to dance for him as she is the only one who speaks Russian. He has lots of money, more than Ani could make over an entire lifetime, and spends it freely. When he invites her to spend more paid time with him, she says yes. Eventually, the two get married while on a whirlwind trip to Vegas. Then, everything starts to fall apart , tipping Ani's life into chaos.

Baker, who also serves as the film’s co-editor, builds this naturally, splicing together montages of partying and revelry that inevitably feel too good to be true . As we soon learn, Ivan has money because he is the son of a Russian oligarch who is not happy to hear his son married someone of a lower class, let alone a sex worker. They then try to force the couple to annul their marriage, but before this can happen, Ivan takes off and leaves Ani alone with the men who have been tasked with fixing the family’s problem. The trio of Toros ( Karren Karagulian ), Garnick ( Vache Tovmasyan ), and Igor ( Yura Borisov ), similarly want to be there about as much as Ani does, though still carry on with the jobs that they've been given.

'Aurora' Is Both Thrilling and Tragic

After some uproarious scenes that are as electrifying and kinetic as anything Baker has ever done , a tentative bargain is struck. Essentially, Ani will help them find Ivan and get ten thousand dollars in exchange. She has other plans in mind, but there is still nothing to be done until they can all find him. The humor to all of this is never in short supply, as the jokes about the dark absurdity of the whole situation fly out left and right, although it soon becomes more quietly haunting when we realize how the deck is stacked. No matter what any of them do, it is almost certain that all of them, Toros, Garnick, Igor, and Ani, are going to come out still struggling while Ivan and his family get to continue accumulating immense wealth while putting this all behind them. This can feel like a bit of a tonal shift, as it goes from being a more madcap journey to something more melancholic, but the reality is that this feeling was always there. Though Ani thought she had found a way out of her situation, with the scene of her saying farewell to all her fellow workers at the strip club becoming terribly tragic in retrospect, there remain structural reasons why people stay locked in cycles of poverty.

This is where the film finds a beautiful balance, with Madison and Baker operating completely in sync. When it comes to cinematic collaborators, one can only hope this is the first of many. From the very jump, Madison perfectly embodies all the complicated layers of Ani . She is a powerful performer with both the necessary patience and presence to hold every scene in her hands, no matter how chaotic they may get. Never once does it feel like the film is valorizing her as some sort of perfect person, instead showing how she is deeply flawed and fearful under the exterior confidence she brings to survive her life of working.

We don’t know where she came from other than a brief reference to having family in Florida. These are presumably people she hasn’t seen in quite some time, both because she rarely mentions them and is rarely shown not working. Madison expertly captures all the vulgarity and visceral parts of Ani’s personality that she has built as armor for herself as she does this just as we begin to see it starting to crack. Baker is similarly attuned to every single moment of her stunning performance, letting the small moments linger until they all accumulate into something substantively shattering. Many of these involve flashes of cruelty from Ivan that Ani doesn’t speak out against, hyper-aware of just who has the leverage in both their relationship and the world. This is all because she has had to be. It's her against the world.

'Anora' Is a Painfully Poetic Portrait of Modern Exploitation

Baker has an eye for capturing how people like him can be reckless and rude, whereas everyone else around him must tread carefully. This is just the surface of the fundamentally unjust world we live in, but each moment cuts like a knife as it reminds us of just how comprehensive this is. It’s all played with subtlety as we observe how there is some small charm to Ivan that Ani is taken with, just as there is frankness in how quickly this can vanish. When push comes to shove, the wealthy will always have class solidarity whereas the rest of the world will need to accumulate much more of it to even have a shot at stability. Ivan will always have his family’s obscene amount of money to fall back on and, without calling attention to it, the entire film is about the inevitable march towards this reasserting itself. There is earned joy to the ways Baker constructs Ani and the crew stumbling through the chaos of the city , though the fact that they are all going to be again put back in their place by the unequal order of things soon drains out any such pleasures.

There will likely be comparisons made between this film and the work of the Safdie Brothers , with much of this middle feeling similar to Good Time , though it is in the downshift where Baker finds something distinct from that . Without taking away from its impact, one of the characters Ani rides around with comes increasingly into the forefront just as the wealthy world she found a way into fades away. We see how she responds with anger at this, throwing out hurtful insults as a way of coping, but eventually, she starts to fall more silent. It is this final stretch where the closing succession of scenes hit like a ton of bricks, proving to be a grim denouement in what could otherwise be a darkly chaotic romp. Gone are the excitement or thrills as the film becomes more reflective. As the vulnerability of the characters comes breaking through, we are left with them out in the cold. No matter what they do to try to keep warm together, the chilling and cruel realities of the world still won’t let them.

Anora is Sean Baker's most searing and shattering film yet with a breakout performance from Mikey Madison.

• The film is a painfully poetic portrait of modern exploitation, proving to be as dynamic as it is devastating.
• Sean Baker builds everything naturally, creating a sense early on that much is too good to be true before bringing the hammer down.
• Mikey Madison perfectly embodies the many layers of Ani, expertly holding every scene in her hands.
• The closing succession of scenes hits like a ton of bricks, proving to be a grim yet honest final note.

Anora had its World Premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

How to Watch and Stream the New 'Fast and the Furious' Movie 'Fast X' Online

The latest film in the franchise introduces Jason Momoa as the villain against Vin Diesel.

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Just like every other movie in the series, we're introduced to both beloved actors (hello, Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez !) and new faces ( Brie Larson and Helen Mirren are among them). But in the newest installment, Fast X, Dominic "Dom" Toretto and Letty Ortiz face off against a villain the duo already have ties to: Dante Reyes ( Jason Momoa ). Over a decade ago, Dom and Brian O'Conner (the late Paul Walker ) took down Dante's father, noted criminal Hernán Reyes. Now, Dante is ready to get his revenge.

Already intrigued? We know you are, and we also know you're wondering how you can watch and stream Fast X from the comfort of your own home. Luckily, we did some research and have an idea of when this will happen .

Fasten your seatbelt, because here's where you can watch and stream Fast X online.

Where to watch and stream Fast X :

Like the previous Fast and the Furious movies, the only way you can see Fast X is by speeding to your local movie theater. But don't worry, because we may already have a clue as to where the film will live for streaming.

Fast X is currently distributed by Universal Pictures, one of the biggest production companies known in media. Back in July 2021, the studio announced it would work with Peacock for their movies to land on the streaming site within months of its theatrical debut. And while the previous movie F9: The Fast Saga is currently available to watch on Max, it's highly likely that Fast X will instead live on Peacock's streaming site.

As for an exact date on when Fast X will move to streaming , it's hard to say. While there's no official word on a streaming date, most Universal films land on a site four months after they hit the box office. If this pattern continues to play out, viewers can start looking out for Fast X starting mid-September 2023.

When the time comes for Fast X to stream on Peacock, you'll need to make sure you're all ready to go. If you don't have an account yet, you can always sign up for a free version ahead of time. But as with many recent films on the site, you'll need to opt into plans that start at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year in order to watch them. Once you're set up, click on the movie's title page on Peacock's official website or on the Peacock app .

While you're waiting to drive into the world of Fast X online, why don't you prep yourself with a Fast and the Furious movie marathon ? That way by the time it drops, you'll be all prepared to properly race back into Toretto's atmosphere . Happy watching!

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