Written by Cameron Geiser

If you had told me two years ago that although F9 wasn't exactly great, the next Fast and Furious movie would be…. kinda good- I would have been shocked. The last movie felt like I was being bombarded by stupidity for a few hours and it was a slog of oddball creative choices that just didn't stack up to the series’ best instalments. Mercifully, Fast X is one of the better films of the series, and they've mended a lot of the issues I had with F9. Granted, that statement comes with a LOT of context. I generally enjoy these films, at their best they are charmingly over the top blockbusters that fulfill your escapism needs, but my bar for quality within this franchise is a bit lower than say anything coming out of studio A24.

So, what worked this time around that didn't last time? Mainly it's the character work and the streamlined story. Well, for newcomers it likely won't feel like the story or plot has been trimmed and condensed into something that makes more sense scene to scene, but compared to the worst of the series (Fast and Furious *the 4th one, Fast and Furious 6, and F9 in particular) this story is far more clear and digestible. We’re not exactly working with Shakespeare here though folks so buckle up, because you're about to hear the word family three hundred times before the credits roll.

Family. Make that three hundred and one times.

Jason Momoa stars as Dante, the son of the villain from the fifth film (arguably the best film of the series) and he is one of the major reasons why this one works so much better. Dante is the kind of villain that this series absolutely requires, a maniac for sure, but an extremely flamboyant and cartoonish one at that. He's done his homework and he's consistently a real threat to the Fast Family throughout the film. He may be the most entertaining villain of the entire series. Speaking of villains, Fast X brings back a lot of the baddies from previous episodes of this soap opera action series. Cipher (Charlize Theron), Shaw (Jason Statham), and Jakob (John Cena) all return, but it's Jakob who gets completely overhauled as a character. Praise be to whoever allowed John Cena to be charismatic with this character because he was dour and an uninteresting villain in the last one. In Fast X it's as if he's playing a variant of his Peacemaker character from DC comics- and that's a good thing.

The most important change from film to film however is that for once in the series’ history it feels as if the scale of threat has been lowered to a more reasonable degree. Yes, there are still plenty of ridiculous things that happen on screen that will either make you cackle with joy or facepalm repeatedly depending on your expectations of reality being broken. But Jason Momoa's Dante isn't trying to take over the world or instigate a nuclear war between geopolitical entities he just wants to ruin Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) life. Revenge, plain and simple.

The action set pieces are all quite entertaining, it's your standard blockbuster stuff, but the fight scenes remain a bit lacklustre. They're not exactly bad per se, but shaky cam fight scenes with tight erratic framing and blocking don't quite cut it when there are films out there like John Wick Chapter 4 showing the industry how to properly do fight scenes. By now you probably know whether or not these films are for you, but if you were feeling as tired and done with the series as I was with the last film, this one might just welcome you back to the family. It certainly surprised me, put me down for the next one, I'm ready to gamble again.

Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.