Barcelona’s Basílica de la Sagrada Família shouldn’t really exist, having been beset by problem after problem over its almost century-and-a-half-long construction process. Key figures died, money ran out, it exhausted supplies of its original Montjuïc sandstone and had to be cobbled together from a patchwork of other materials. At several points during its creation, construction had to be paused while architects waited for the technology necessary to finish it to be created.
I’m telling you this because – and do stop me if you think this is too grandiose a comparison – Fast X, the most recent film in the Fast and Furious franchise, is the cinematic equivalent of the Basílica de la Sagrada Família.
Which isn’t to say that I like it, because I don’t. But I have developed an unhealthy fascination with it, to the extent that it’s easily the film I’ve watched most often over the last couple of years. If there’s sufficient space in my schedule at any given point in time, I will invariably end up watching it. That’s the definition of a feelgood movie, isn’t it?
Potentially, my fascination might stem from the fact that I haven’t seen many of the other Fast and Furious films. I saw the first one that the Rock was in. I saw the one with the impossibly long runway at the end. I watched Hobbs and Shaw, the film in which the Rock and Jason Statham take turns to punch Idris Elba’s robotic supervillian. But this means that I’ve come to Fast X without the proper context. And my reaction will be the same as anyone who only ever sees the Sagrada Família in its completed form: how the hell did this happen?
On a moment-to-moment basis, Fast X is incredible. A giant spherical nuclear bomb crashes through Rome. A car becomes a cannon. There’s a missile attack on a bridge. A dam explodes. Charlize Theron smashes up about 400 baddies at the same time. Jason Momoa plays the villain, aiming for the Joker, but instead hitting the exact halfway point between his characters in Game of Thrones and A Minecraft Movie.
But, with a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you what the film is actually about. This is the 10th Fast and Furious film, and it appears to bring every single character from every single previous film back into the fold. Characters who were seen as extinction-level events just a few years ago – Theron, Statham, John Cena – are suddenly BFFs with Vin Diesel and the gang.
But Ludacris is also back, and Scott Eastwood is also back, and Tyrese Gibson, and Michelle Rodriguez, and Nathalie Emmanuel, and (in flashback) Paul Walker. The Rock briefly revives his old role, as does Dame Helen Mirren. Gal Gadot even turns up and smiles right at the end, like she’s in an episode of Dad’s Army. And then, on top of this heaving orgy of existing mythology, they even manage to bring in people such as Brie Larson, Alan Ritchson, Pete Davidson and Rita Moreno to act as yet more ballast with cameos that enjoy varying degrees of pointlessness.
Mention should also be made of the film’s closing 15 minutes, which have the look and feel of what would happen if you force-fed a binful of Haribo to a tantrumming three-year-old and then temporarily handed them control of Universal Pictures. To wit, Vin Diesel drops out of a plane in the middle of a car chase, before exploding some helicopters that have tried to harpoon his car into the air. At this point, while any number of cars are spinning out of control at impossible speeds, Diesel’s eight-year-old son flings himself through the air and lands perfectly in the passenger seat next to Diesel. Then, in one of the most baffling CGI shots ever committed to film (involving his son, his biceps, a crucifix and a journey inside the entirety of a car’s engine, Diesel somehow outruns an exploding dam). And then the dam explodes anyway, leaving them almost certainly dead.
To be clear, on an intellectual level, I do not like any of this. It’s overstuffed and incoherent, weirdly directed and poorly acted. It is a barrage of empty colour and noise, and none of it fits together well. There is literally nothing separating Fast X from that video of the fireworks display where they accidentally set off every firework at once, except Fast X is 559 times longer. But if I find myself with a couple of hours to spare tonight, you’d better believe that I’m going to watch it.
Like the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, the Fast and Furious franchise remains incomplete. A final installment is due in 2027, and all current information suggests that it will completely ignore most of what happened in Fast X. I cannot tell you how true I hope this is. It is the only way that the stupidest franchise on earth could get any stupider.