Fast & Furious 9 Review: Come For The Silly Action, Stay For Fan-Favourite Character’s Resurrection

​​​​​​​In a Season 16 episode of Family Guy, Stewie Griffin describes the Fast & Furious saga as “a meditation on the importance of family, fast cars, product placement, racial ambiguity and family”. And the mediation continues in the latest and very bloated chapter where Dominic (Vin Diesel) and his crew of street-racers-turned-turned-…superspies (?) are assembled at the drop of a hat to recover another doomsday McGuffin from landing in the wrong hands. A rather underused John Cena joins the heavy metal melee as Jakob, Dom’s never-knew-he-existed-until-now black sheep brother (hence the runtime-inflating back story to explain his absence) threatening world stability. With Justin Lin (Fast & Furious 3-6) back at the helm, the series’ gleefully silly Looney Tunes-meets-Micro Machines mayhem reaches new heights of ridiculousness, including a laughable trip to space; the action is fun and noisy, without being too exciting (blame the trailers for ruining the element of surprise). The good news is, it delivers on another front: justice for Han (Sung Kang). The fan-favourite’s resurrection retcons the retcon in Fast & Furious 8 where his killer Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) is upgraded from villain to one of Dom’s BBQ kaki. But Han’s return opens up a whole new can of worms: it doesn’t change the fact that Shaw is made the good guy and that it kinda diminishes the emotional impact of his demise in Tokyo Drift/Fast & Furious 6. Oh, well. At least now, I’m not upset when I watch Fast & Furious 8. Okay, maybe still a little bit. (2.5/5 stars)