Review of F9: Absurd Adrenaline

January 26, 2022

Dom Torreto (Vin Diesel), his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and son Brian were living a quiet rural life after their last adventure defeating cyber-terrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron).  However, dire circumstances force them to again face Cipher, who was now being held by rich megalomaniac Otto (Thue Ersted Rasmussen) and Dom's estranged brother Jakob (John Cena), who were after the two halves of a powerful device called Project Aries, which could give its operator the ability to hack into any computer system worldwide. 

This is already the 9th installment in the Fast and Furious franchise, the direct sequel of "The Fate of the Furious" (2017). Aside from Letty, other members of Dom's family in on the action here were Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). Later on, we will also see more comebacking members, like Dom's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and Han (Sung Kang), as well as Sean Boswell (Lucas Black),Twinkie (Shad Moss), and Earl Hu (Jason Tobin), from "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" (2006).

As the 9th film, the pressure on this latest episode was to somehow supersede all the death-defying and physics-challenging motor vehicle stunts which had been executed by Dom and his crew to awe their fans in the past 8 films. One main gimmick in operation in multiple scenes this time was a powerful electromagnet system, one that is strong capable to pulling cars off the street. Later in the film, we even see Roman and Tej launching off into outer space in a makeshift rocketship using a Pontiac Fiero.

You can just imagine the innovative stunts team of this film during their brainstorming sessions as they come up with the most outlandish car stunts never ever tried before. There was an impossible one right at the start as Dom hitched a car on a rope to swing across a chasm. Later in Tbilisi, Dom was able to force a huge invincible 16-wheeler trailer truck called the Armadillo, to turn turtle and hit a flying drone shooting at him. Even Helen Mirren (as Queenie Shaw, Deckard's mother) had a crazy car stunt of her own with Dom as her passenger.

In one meta scene, Roman commented how he was amazed that all of them can repeatedly survive even the most terrible car crashes unscathed. They did just that over and over here, throwing out all the laws of physics, logic and human kinetics. Dom can literally pull a rock ceiling down on him and fall into a bottomless pit; or jump out of a burning flipping monster truck onto a concrete road, and still survive with no bones broken. This is escapist popcorn cinema people enjoy to watch on the big screen, and it certainly won't stop at 9. 7/10.