Fast X Film Review

Sometimes I wonder who would break first, a physicist asked to analyse a Fast and Furious film or a historian asked to review Churchill: The Hollywood Years. That’s the one where Christian Slater plays Winston Churchill as a US Marine trying to stop Hitler from marrying the queen.

I don’t recommend it.

Anyway, interesting thought experiments aside, I always find it amusing that a series which I swear started off as… “inspired” by Point Break whereupon a police office is sent undercover with a group of extreme sports enthusiasts and winds up joining their ‘family’. Also, they were stealing TV VHS players. If you don’t know what that is, then ask your parents.

Back in 2023 and the ‘family’ is now… I don’t know what they are now. Secret agents? The Avengers? Rich people in need of a hobby? Anyway, our hero’s are forced to do battle against… The Joker!

Hmm?

Aquaman isn’t playing the Joker? But instead the son of drug kingpin Hernan Reyes? You remember, from the 5^th one? No, not the one with the runway, or the submarine, the one with Brazil? The safe? Whatever, just accept in this universe Jason Momoa can be sired by Joaquim de Almeida, possibly because his entirely offscreen mum was related Hagrid.

I swear, the first time we same them onscreen together, my wife burst out laughing and stated to me that she could no longer take this film seriously.

I was impressed she lasted that long.

As for the film itself, it’s an odd beast. For my money the best action sequence is in the first third, to call the cast overstuffed is an understatement – why is Brie Larson there? She could very easily have been replaced or removed, but I guess she’ll come into play in Fast and Furious 11 – Fastraker.

Yeah, the overstuffed cast is a major problem as all 837 of them need something to do and as a result the back half of the movie basically consists of them all trying to get from point A to point B and I started to get a bit fidgety.

I mean a film with an alleged budget of 380 million dollars (in the same way that my alleged budget for my last night out was £30) Shouldn’t really feel like a collection of people wondering around various sets when I paid for vroom vroom boom boom!

I mean, there is vroom vroom boom boom but just not enough for me. I’m just going to assume that most of the budget went to the cast. Or were spent on rebuilding every single set after every, single take featuring Ronon Dex off of Stargate Atlantis because the last time an actor was having this much fun on set, they were Jeremy Irons on the set of Dungeons and Dragons. The terrible one. Not the one starring Chris Pine that you already forgot existed.

It was pretty good for a Guardians of the Galaxy clone wearing Dungeons and Dragons clothing.

But as for The Cars Who Loved Me, my main issue with it, is that this is clearly the biggest part one since that exercise in cinematic nihilism “Avengers Infinity War” I swear if it had finished with a musical sting and the phrase To Be Continued showing up onscreen, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

I mean it does seem to have dialled things back a hair after the last one just dialled the silliness up to eleven which to my mind can only e a good thing but there’s just a whiff of the checklist/ production line about the whole affair.

 Let’s face it, were it not for Conan (Skip his version and watch Arnies instead) having the time of his life, this whole film would feel a little flat. It’s very similar to the terrifyingly over-rated Dark Knight, whenever there’s a non-villain scene the whole thing drags slightly and everyone’s mumbling their lines because everything’s VERY VERY IMPORTANT.

And you’ve also got the usual grumbles, everyone’s taken their invulnerability pills this morning, it’s too long, the plots ludicrously simple yet at the same time overly complicated, and like I said there are way too many characters with basically the same objective- putting the band back together- and look, it’s a fast and furious film. If you’ve liked them before, then you’ll like this one and if you didn’t like the last one then this won’t change your mind.

I’m just waiting for Jeremy Clarkson to turn up in the next one.

My Score- If Nothing Else        

Fast and Furious: Hobbes and Shaw Review

On paper (and indeed on film) Hobbes and Shaw seems to embody everything wrong with this generation of film I mean it’s a spin off of the tenth-highest-grossing film series of all time with a combined gross of over $5 billion which began way back in 2001 as basically a remake of Point Break with cars instead of surfing and the villains plot is to steal TV VCR combos (ask your dad) whereas today, these are basically superhero films. Except these guys allegedly don’t have any superpowers beyond making never ending runways and having cars with unlimited gear changing abilities.

The fight scenes are over edited for reasons i’ll get to in a second, all the best bits were in the trailer making moments that should have whacked an awesome goofy grin on my face seem tired and old, hell, it’s a spin off from an 18 year old franchise, starring arguably three of the biggest names on the planet right now, backed by one of the biggest studios in the world, with a budget of 200 million dollars.. and it’s an underdog movie because it’s the only one of the… I’ll say 7 films to break a billion dollars this year that isn’t from the House of Mouse. Seriously, how is this good for cinema!?!? But since i’m the only one who seems to care that basically allowing one company to monopolize modern entertainment might be A VERY BAD THING I’ll get back on topic.

The characters are all paper thin, everybody should have been dead in the first twenty minutes but they never get so much as a scratch because our two main leads literally have it in their contracts that they can’t lose a fight meaning that the only tension in this film comes just before elevension, the plots utterly mad and yet completely predictable at the same time, it’s completely overstuffed for it’s run-time, there’s barely any time to absorb what mad, awesome, sometimes practical, sometimes bad CGI stunt just happened. Genetically super enhanced bad guys who still can’t shoot straight.  Oh, and it sequel baits, because of course it does.

I loved every single second.

I mean, within a minute Idris Elba has walked on screen, declared himself The Bad Guy, beaten up a load of extras and then we start running and never stop and I loved it. There’s just something about this franchise that makes my inner eight year old break out into a huge grin which never wavers for a single second.

The plot, (such as it is) features former member member of Britain’s National Swimming Squad Jason Statham team up with Former Pro Wrestler Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to stop Idris Elba who’s evil plan is to kill billions of people because villains in blockbuster films are now only allowed to be Thanos. I think the UN passed a resolution about it. Or Hollywood is now run by people who used to work in customer services. Either way works for me.

And I think the reason that this franchise works for me is that well, the whole franchise – it’s an 80’s cartoon that somehow made it to the big screen.

I’m serious! Tell me you can’t see it, whatever members of this group that need a paycheck are doing their thing then the alarm goes off and they all rush off to defeat whatever evil villain is doing evil things this week in their tricked out cars and with whatever gadgets their version of Q has made for them this week. It’s a similar reaction to the one I have for 2010’s A-Team or 2005’s seriously underrated Sahara- The dialogues at about the same level.

Most of the stunts are practical and the ending third – which is about the same time that the director remembered that he was making a Fast and Furious spin-off and not a Mission Impossible spin-off that the whole film really just goes for it.

Which, to be honest is all that I wanted from this film. I wanted madness, I wanted a film full of dialogue that sounds like a 12 year old wrote it. Hell, I want more films loaded with practical effects. I love this film because it reminds me of what film was, what it could be and probably will be again after the superhero bubble pops in the next few years. In the meantime though, this is a blast. It’s many, many flaws not withstanding.

My Score- See It

The Fate Of The Furious Review

Back in 2001, a low budget film called The Fast and the Furious was released onto a mostly indifferent public. It wasn’t a sequel or remake to either the 1939  mystery comedy film directed by Busby Berkeley.  Nor was it a sequel to  the 1955 American film noir starring John Ireland and Dorothy Malone. It was instead such a pallet swapped carbon copy of the 1991 cult classic Point Break that I’ve always been slightly confused as to why the lawyers never got involved.

The series pottered on for a few unremarkable sequels and then, one dark evening and probably after a small amount of ‘Columbian inspiration powder’ some executive somewhere Frankensteined this nearly extinct car franchise with Michael Bay and Several series of Top Gear, threw in a cast of varying genders, ethnicities and levels of acting ability, laughed madly as the lightning flashed and the (at time of writing) 9th highest grossing franchise of all time lurched from the table and out into the world.

Back to the 8th film in the franchise (numbers nine and ten are due to be released in  2019 and 2021 respectively) I paid my money, deactivated the parts of my brain that like developed charterers, logic, the laws of physics, gravity, the amount of damage the human body can take as we currently understand them, plots that make sense and why on Earth Dame Helen Mirren would be told to do her best Barbara Windsor impersonation. Or why Snake Plisken would be wasted as chief exposition and plot mover instead of as an actual character. And so hyped on on coke and popcorn I was…..

Slightly bored.

Lets start with the big issues, all of the big WOW moments in the film were spoiled in the trailers, meaning that when I did see them I was waiting to see what else the film had up it’s sleeve instead of enjoying the carnage on screen (According to insurance company InsuretheGap.com, the damage done onscreen through the stunts of the franchise would total more than $514 million across the first seven films.)

And when the film does have a fun car chase shot so competently that at times I could almost tell what was happening, the film would slow down for a dialogue scene giving the audiences time to catch their breath which sadly also means that we can start thinking at which point this film falls apart. This franchise works best when the audience is so drunk on spectacle and sugar highs that they can’t question almost every aspect of the film and leave with a good feeling. And that just doesn’t happen here.

It also doesn’t help that I could have removed every car chase/race out of this car racing racing franchise and it wouldn’t have impacted the film in the slightest.  It would have trimmed the run-time down from 136 minutes to maybe 120 but that’s no great loss.

Mind you, I did like the fight scenes and laughed more at the frankly ridiculous dialogue and characters moments than I have in some comedies. But the film never quite came together for me. It felt like a spy film with a few chases in rather than a car racing franchises.

Speaking of which,  Charlize Theron plays an amazing villain in Cypher a computer hacker who can do everything with computers that scriptwriters from 1994 thought that you could do with computers. She’s cool, calm, collected and is probably the best villain James Bond has never fought. She’s completely wrong for this franchise but she’s a really good villain in her own right.

Is Furious 8 a good film? Not really. It has too many slow moments, trying to develop characters that we don’t really care about who spout terrible dialogue whilst struggling to act. Its stunts have been seen too many times in trailers to be impressive. And even then, this franchise has done better It’s too long and despite a budget of 250 million feels like it somehow needed more.

My Score- Skip It. 

XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage

*Hysterical Laughter*

Sorry guys, I keep trying to get my critical head on but… you’ll never guess what I’ve just seen… a sequel to XXX: State of the Union! You know, one of the worst received action adventure films of all time!

And even though this is basically a soft reboot- turning what was literally an attempt to rip the spy genre from the hands of a certain tuxedo wearing Brit into The Expendables  film that I always wanted.

I mean I did have to deactivate a few parts of my brain to fully enjoy this films madness, only a few mind, such as those responsible for, plot, logic, understanding the laws of physics, wanting actual characters rather than cartoon characters and the part that likes dialogue rather than exposition and one liners.

But once those bits had been safely removed and placed in a locked, sealed, bunker. I actually found a lot to like. Sly, forget making Expendables 4 with a 2018 release because xxx: Return of Xander Cage has done it.With style, panache, and with the full knowledge that if it slows down for even a second then it’s going to lose the audience who, if given a second might ask if guns really don’t ever need reloading or why XXX: State of the Union is still being regarded as Canon, or any other of a thousand little questions.

Oh and despite having several notable practical effects, the relatively low budget of 85 million dollars means that when they use CGI it is sadly, VERY VERY NOTICEABLE. But the film is so fast moving that you don’t have time to focus on this. Or anything else for that matter.

But I did find a hell of a lot to like, the ‘plot’ is your basic recover the McGuffin that’s the perfect kind of nonsense, I loved almost every single character (not all of whom seemed to have names)  with the sole exception on the ‘tech support’ character who seemed to have been told to act like an even more irritating version of Arrow’s Felicity Smoak. But aside from that this has got to be the biggest action film surprise since last years Mechanic: Resurrection. 

XXX: Return of Xander Cage is a sugar rush from beginning to end with no time to pause for breathe, the cast has good chemistry, a lot of the stunts work, a higher budget would have been nice but I walked out with a huge stupid smile on my face and a strong desire for a sequel.

My Score- See It