(M) ★★★
Director: Justin Lin.
Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Vinnie Bennett, Finn Cole, Michael Rooker, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell, Charlize Theron, Thue Ersted Rasmussen, Anna Sawai, J. D. Pardo, Lucas Black, Bow Wow, Jason Tobin.
Welcome back to the world of The Fast & The Furious, where family is everything and the laws of physics mean nothing.
The rhythm and style of the franchise is well established now - Dominic Torretto's gang of super-spies use their mad driving skills to save the world from a crazed villain. There will be impossible stunts and impassioned pleas about the importance of family. All that really changes is the levels of insanity the film-makers will drive the car-related action to.
The MacGuffin this time around is Ares - a tech weapon that can take over any computer anywhere once its uploaded to a satellite. Old friends will reunite with Dom (Diesel) and co to find the two pieces of Ares before the baddies do, while old foes and a blast from Dom's past will try to stop them.
You're either on board with the F&F series by now or you're not. Since Fast Five's deliberate re-positioning of the franchise as a series of motorised heists, it hasn't looked back, revving its engines in more daring ways with each instalment and blazing a trail through the box office as it goes. Here we get landmines, magnets and space travel thrown into the mix of a film that is otherwise indistinguishable from F8 and F6.
All that really matters is whether it works, and it does for the most part. It feels petty pointing out the illogical, impossible physics-breaking stunts that pepper the film - that is part of the F&F charm. A car swinging across a crevasse on a rope? Sure, that's F&F! What's less forgivable is the bloated backstory and the too-many sepia-toned flashbacks, or the hard-to-believe plot moments, such as how a couple of characters stumble upon the most cryptic of clues to find their lost friend in a massive city like Tokyo.
A tiredness is creeping into the crew too. Paul Walker's absence is keenly felt because he provided a nice balance to Diesel's Dom, and it's left to Ramsey (Emmanuel) and comic relief characters Tej (Bridges) and Roman (Gibson) to lighten proceedings and provide a bit of spark. Mirren's almost pointless cameo is also great, but most of the characters feel ill-defined.
F9 is very much a same-same entry in the F&F universe. Not terrible, yet not as exhilarating as F5 nor as passionate as F7, it feels very much like a tipping point in the series. Something special is needed in the franchise to rev it up once more, otherwise it will just continue to plod along until it runs out of fuel.
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