F9 Dials Up The 'Furious Franchise With Old Mistakes

                         

I have never been exactly a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise but after many attempts to properly binge the franchise, I have finally succeeded, and turns out, they are not all bad. They have been hit and miss here and there but there is a reason why this long-winded franchise has continued to entertain audiences for the last two decades. With that aside, after a long month of waiting, F9 finally is out to be rented or downloaded for all FF fans who didn't get to watch it in theatres due to the pandemic showing no sign of ending anytime soon. 

For those who are wondering, there are officially 10 movies in the franchise but why is this called Fast and Furious 9 (or F9 for short). Well, 2019's Hobbs and Shaw is actually a spin-off and not considered part of the main set of movies - and is secretly a new way to expand the franchise, make more money, and have a way to include Dwayne Johnson within the franchise without him interacting with Vin Diesel and Tyrese Gibson after the big feud, that I had no idea about until recently. 

With that, F9 is the first sequel to not feature The Rock since the fifth installment and as per usual, focuses on Vin Diesel's character, Dom Toretto. It is set 2 years after Fate of the Furious with Dom raising his son. The team is then, called in to retrieve a device Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russel) has left for them to find and protect from the wrong hands. In an attempt, to retrieve the device, we are introduced to an unlikely villain who happens to be Dom's long-lost brother, Jakob played by wrestler turned actor, John Cena. This doomsday device has to be stopped or the entire world will be reset and it's up to the team to make sure that doesn't happen. 

F9 is the longest movie amongst the others bringing a whopping runtime of 2 hours and 22 minutes. How much can you do in a franchise that is constantly trying to one-up itself with each sequel? This sequel meshes the past and present to tell the story of Dom and Jakob's fallout that led to the events of the present. That might not be the most viable reason to make a movie longer but with the action sequences choreographed for this film, you're probably going to be left agreeing with the decision. 

Honestly, the best part of this franchise is its car chases. The team has so done so many death-defying missions in the past that it is almost hard to wonder what else does this franchise has in store. This sequel's car chases weren't as nail-bitingly good as the submarine chase in the predecessor, but the use of magnets in this film is so fun that it probably brought a big cheque for the studio to pay for the number of cars they destroyed for that final act. 

Yes, F9 brings a whole new level of action but it, unfortunately, does not make itself worth being known as a memorable or let alone, a good sequel, a problem that recurred a few times. The franchise was becoming better after the infamous Furious 7. However, I think it's safe to say that the franchise should up their game. 

In the case of character development, there is honestly not much to say about the core cast but the focus is always the new additions which in the case would be Cena's character, Jakob. The addition of Dom's brother to the narrative was forced in for the sake of eventually making him an ally to rely on like every other villain-like figure the franchise has had. Amidst that, the film also included an arc that involved resurrecting Han, an arc that surprisingly was not written in the laziest way possible and became the only interesting part of the F9 but unfortunately, this belittles the most effective death within the franchise, a mistake they decided to repeat after resurrecting Michelle Rodriguez's character, Letty. But with Han coming back from the dead, brought along new Asian character into the mix and a nice Tokyo Drift reunion. 

In a nutshell, F9 has all the pieces needed to make a successful FF sequel but recycles old story arcs I was really hoping to be abandoned the moment the franchise switched lanes for the better.