The best of the post-Walker era of Fast & Furious.
Humans tend to remember endings more than beginnings, so this movie is wise to frontload all the bad, boring parts. It opens with a retcon and replay of the ending of Fast Five, a much better action sequence than you’ll see in this movie’s first 45 minutes. It then cuts to an interminable action sequence in Rome that features many characters doing nothing, a seemingly endless chase, and a really clumsy introduction of Momoa as the villain.
I love this series but I started doing the dishes at this point.
But! After some wobbly exposition (too many Nobodies to count), it finally starts turning around! Someone remembered that John Cena is a great comedic actor and put him to much better use than last time around. Instead of going bigger, the movie highlights some thrilling and smaller action sequences that really sing (the Han/Shaw fight, the Cipher/Letty grudge match). Momoa’s villain was given space to breathe as a character, and Alan Ritchson turns in one of the series’ best supporting performances. They even gave Roman an extremely brief break from nonstop comic relief, although they still hold up their tradition of really overdoing how stupid Roman suddenly became after part II.
I still have my complaints (why cast Charlize Theron but never let her do anything!), but I’m excited to see this wrap up in the next installment.
