After the victory of Dominic Toretto’s team over the terrible hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron), Dominic (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) retired to a quiet country farm to raise little Brian, whom Dominic is preparing for adulthood: he teaches the boy how to repair a tractor.
Of course, Dominic and Letty are terribly bored: such a life is not for them. They would have all sorts of races, fights, shootouts, save this damn world again, and here you are sitting in some kind of rural wilderness, but you know, sort out the tractor engine – boring things!
But we are well aware that very little time will pass – and the song will again call them on the road, because again some regular Doctor Evil will decide to create some vile villainy, and only the Coolest Team in the world can stop him.
And indeed: Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), with whom Toretto has been cooperating for a long time, sent them an urgent message stating that his plane with something very important plus with the captive hacker Cypher, some unknown people had crashed into a forest somewhere in the north western part of Montequinto – in the area of the military zone. No one asks the team to find this place and pick up a valuable cargo, which under no circumstances should go to the next Doctor Evil, and this time the villain turned out to be … Dominic’s brother Jacob (John Cena), with whom Dominic “does not talk after one incident “.
Jacob’s assistants are the strange Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen): the son of the dictator of some unnamed country. Otto is very wealthy and commands a small army, but with the help of Jacob, Otto hopes to become much richer.
Well, now this whole gang-watering can will be properly shaken around the world: Montekinto, the Caspian Sea, London, Tokyo, Edinburgh and Tbilisi, which will be especially pitiful, because it is there that the Main Chukalovo will take place. And Roman (Tyrese Gibson), together with Tedzh (Ludacris), will even go to space – why bother with trifles, right?
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As you know, the ninth “Fast and the Furious” was supposed to be released on May 21, 2020. But because of the coronavirus fun, it was first postponed to April 2, 2021, and after the next rotten Bond film was postponed to the same release date, the next Fast and the Furious was postponed to May 28, 2021, when the picture nevertheless reached the screens.
This picture, like many other films of the franchise, was shot by Justin Lin (he directed the third, fourth, fifth and sixth “Fast and the Furious”), and here Lin’s invitation looked quite natural, because in the ninth “Fast and the Furious” the action was for some reason connected with the events the third “Fast and the Furious”, in which Khan (Sung Kang) died, but nevertheless he later participated as a guest member of the Toretto team in several subsequent “Fast and Furious”, which were also directed by Justin Lin.
However, all this binding to the third “Fast and the Furious” looked like a frank pulling of an owl on a globe, especially since the heroically murdered Khan was revived here anyway, so it’s generally not clear why all the fuss, but what’s done is done: as you know, banal logic in any “Fast and the Furious” did not spend the night by definition.
The plot is all the usual typical “Fast and the Furious” – that the ninth, that the fiftieth. Toretto and Letty (if she is not temporarily killed, as in some past film) are again sad “for the old life” and again get this old life in full. There is the obligatory Glavgad, who definitely wants to either destroy this world, or bring this world to its knees, or seize all the cheburechs around the world, there are special services and spies, there is the Toretto Team, which at the moment still lacks Shaw and Hobbs , who were just very busy, and we will not remember that Shaw, who generally appeared as Glavgad only in the seventh “Fast and the Furious” and who later became a member of the Toretto team in a cool, albeit extremely bad (like everyone else) the eighth “Fast and the Furious”, here, for some reason, also appears in the post-title scene. Looks like he’s not that busy – but what about Hobbs?!
But there is Romance with Tej and Good Hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel), there is Bad Hacker (Charlize Theron), there is Family Conflict (on Wikipedia they write that Dominic seems to have mentioned his brother in the first film – I don’t point it out I remember, but, on the other hand, what, generally speaking, is the difference?), well, then everything is on the knurled.
No one cares about the logic of what is happening, as usual, the connection with the third “Fast and the Furious” is made from the series “we will show when Khan died, although he, bitch, did not die”, Jacob (terribly Old Testament name) plays the head and plays with his jaws, Dominic ( Latin, damn it) is the main hero and plays with nodules, but everything else will be drawn on a computer with absolutely delightful disregard for gravity, and mechanics, and physics, and other nonsense. But I’ll ask right away: after the multi-ton safe with which these wonderful people rode back in the fifth Fast and the Furious, when Hobbs was chasing them as if blown up under this safe, do you still have any questions?
Therefore, for me personally, the claims “to reliability” look very ridiculous. No “credibility” in the “Fast and the Furious” has never spent the night – commercially since about the fourth film in the franchise. And what did you generally want to get after the eighth “Fast and the Furious”, where a submarine in the steppes of Ukraine plowed the expanses of the Bolshoi Theater?
Here everything is about the same, but I note that after one old, completely dull “Fast and the Furious”, where something noticeable was connected only with the explosion of a gas station, there was still enough action here: the team’s trip to the plane and the subsequent race through the minefield , all sorts of other races, battles, skirmishes, and even the almost inevitable death of Toretto, who nevertheless was saved by Letty’s loving hands or feet – this was enough here, although it was neatly smeared over an almost two and a half hour film, but here it is already a tradition like this: the next “Fast and the Furious” cannot be shorter than two hours and twenty minutes.
In addition, here Roman’s character frankly jokes about the fact that all of them are specifically and rather stupidly indestructible, and it looks quite good: well, guys, you understand that this is “Fast and the Furious” – we are all like that, we are not on the road if you kill us, we will even fly into space in a car with a rocket engine – and they really flew there.
Well, they also brought up the old story with dad Toretto and his two sons, and the actor Vinnie Bennett, who played the young Dominic, perfectly showed in three short episodes that he is a much cooler actor than Vin Diesel … – it’s strange that this story Vin Diesel himself did not cut it. He probably just didn’t understand what happened there. Well, or he thought that it was enough for him to simply come to the fore, bulge his muscles and utter some next completed stupidity. He’s probably right, judging by the fees.
So it’s a completely ordinary afterburner afterburner, expected, while expectedly dynamic and special-effect. Although extremely unreliable and often cartoonish. But it’s not bad drawn, Diesel and John Cena play with nodules, cool guys are witty, Good Hacker is a good hacker, Bad Hacker is a bad hacker, the world is on the verge of losing control over chebureks, life goes on. The main thing here is that family values have triumphed, and what else did we all need from this? For me personally, nothing.
Yes, Helen Mirren appeared in a very short but great episode, and for that I can forgive the entire ninth Fast and the Furious. Because it’s really nice to see Elena Vasilievna in any film in any role – she is absolutely wonderful!
By the way, I read that the producers of the franchise are still going to finish, so this is the first film of the three final films – well, good luck, good luck. They have already reached space, so it is not clear where this will still lead them. But let it lead somewhere – the cat Bagel and I believe in them. Although, to be honest, we absolutely do not care. Amen.
PS With magnets it was quite funny, and this kind of idiotic magnets were still invented by Mike Bay for his crazy “Ghost Six”.
Fast & Furious 9 / F9 movie review
Directed by: Justin Lin Cast: Vin Diesel, John Cena, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Michelle Rodriguez, Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron, Michael Rooker, Song Kang, Kurt Russell, Lucas Black, Thue Oersted Rasmussen, Vinnie Bennett
Budget: $200 million
Action, USA-Thailand-Canada, 2021, 143 min.