F9 Review

Lin came back for this and brought the two things the series now runs on, an invented sibling and a set piece that leaves the atmosphere. John Cena is introduced as a brother the previous eight films never mentioned, and the flashbacks that justify him are staged with the earnestness of a television pilot, slowing the picture to a crawl every time it starts to move. The rocket car is at least honest about what this franchise has become, and the film's willingness to joke about its own invulnerability is a relief after the solemnity of the last two entries.

What has been lost is legibility. The action is assembled from so many separate components that you rarely know where anyone is standing, and the magnet truck sequences turn physical space into a cartoon where objects move because the edit needs them to. Bringing Han back is handled with a shrug. At well over two hours it is badly overlong, and the good ideas, mostly the ones that treat the whole thing as a joke, sit under a plot about paternal legacy nobody asked for.