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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\u201cF9: The Fast Saga\u201d is the latest entry into the franchise started by \u201cThe Fast and the Furious\u201d in 2001, which has been really inconsistent in its naming of each subsequent sequel. Vin Diesel returns as Dominic Toretto, a drag racer turned thief turned unofficial secret agent. He\u2019s joined by his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), and friends Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) in going on missions to save the world, missions that always involve driving cars fast and dangerously, \u201cfuriously\u201d if you will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this ninth installment (tenth if you count the Diesel-less spinoff \u201cHobbs & Shaw\u201d), the film throws a curve at Dom in the form of his estranged brother Jakob (John Cena). Jakob played a part in sabotaging their father\u2019s race car as a kid, resulting in his death. Dom drove Jakob off (pun intended) in a drag race, but now his brother has resurfaced and is working with a spoiled German (Thue Ersted Rasmussen) to steal a device that will give them control over weapons systems around the world. Jakob and Otto have enlisted the services of the franchise\u2019s main villain Cipher (Charlize Theron), but she\u2019s so cunning and megalomaniacal, it\u2019s like she\u2019s enlisted them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best thing about the film, as always, is the action sequences, filled with affronts to the laws of physics. Here we get a chase through a jungle (complete with a collapsing bridge, a minefield, and a car stuck between two rocks upside-down over a minefield), a chase through London led by Queenie Shaw (Helen Mirren), a chase through Edinburgh with electromagnets so powerful they can suck a car clean out of a building, and an outer-space manual shutdown of a satellite using a car with a rocket engine, but which still counts as a \u201ccar\u201d sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the most heavily-promoted aspect of the film is the return of Han (Sung Kang), a character killed off in the third movie. It\u2019s nice to have the likeable character back, but this is at least the third time the franchise has brought back a character thought to be dead, after Letty resurfacing in the sixth movie and a villain turning out to be merely severely injured in the seventh. It\u2019s like this series can\u2019t keep anyone dead unless they were in the first movie, are a secondary villain, or have to go off and film \u201cWonder Woman.\u201d Even the real-life death of Paul Walker isn\u2019t sticking for his character, a creative decision I find distasteful, quite frankly. I get that these movies want to keep Walker\u2019s memory alive, but keeping him \u201calive\u201d this literally isn\u2019t doing anyone any favors. In fact, it detracts from the perfect send-off he had in the seventh movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real problem I have with all the resurrections and impossible survivals is that it removes consequences from the characters\u2019 actions. If someone\u2019s car explodes, they can just walk away from the explosion (admittedly Dom\u2019s father doesn\u2019t, at least as far as I know, but at least one other explosion is survived in this film). If they fall from a great height, they can just land on a cushion. This makes me less scared of the characters exploding, falling and crashing in the first place and detracts from the film\u2019s excitement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know I\u2019m supposed to \u201cturn off my brain and enjoy the ride\u201d with these movies, and I\u2019ve been able to enjoy them in the past, but for this installment, I was bored. I was bored with the inevitability that these characters will survive no matter what they do. Even the characters themselves are getting bored with always surviving, and they make mention of it. If the \u201cFast Saga\u201d wants to retain its fanbase, it can\u2019t afford to be boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cF9: The Fast Saga\u201d is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and language. Its running time is 145 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver \u201cF9: The Fast Saga\u201d is the latest entry into the franchise started by \u201cThe Fast and the Furious\u201d in 2001, which has been really inconsistent in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":49380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49381,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49379\/revisions\/49381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}