As previously mentioned The Fast and The Furious franchise passed fast and accelerated to ludicrous a while ago. Fast 9 doubles down on that outrageous aspect and with a ninth film we finally learn that Dom (Vin Diesel) Mia (Jordana Brewster) have a brother, Jacob (John Cena).

It seems Jacob is just as good a driver and trouble-seeker as Dom and company. He takes down Mr. Nobody’s (Kurt Russell) plane, and gets away with Cipher (Charlize Theron). Nobody gets a transmission off to Dom’s crew, and he has to leave his new son behind to go on a world-saving adventure again.

The main cast is reunited, hey, maybe Han (Sung Kang) is alive(!) and has a connection to global threat that Jacob and his pals are looking for. Tenuous story threads pile up to make a ratty tapestry, and the series is trying to go all out as a fast-driving Mission: Impossible competitor.

The cast is still fun, and also has a lot of fun supporting characters; Helen Mirren is back, and hey, Micheal Rooker joins the franchise!

With the barest bones of a narrative (and family secrets), the story and characters globetrot, giving us chases in places we haven’t seen before, and delivering some ridiculous moments and stunts. Honestly, it’s just getting silly at this point. But they’re still kind of fun.

Justin Lin is directing again, and he knows how to handle the big action beats, and establish narratives between the various stunt sequences, keeping things going at full throttle.

Even the characters, Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) discuss how all of them have survived insane adventures and assaults, not to mention countless car crashes, and collisions and have come out completely unscathed.

There’s no emotional or physical cost to the characters in these films. It’s just silliness and they long ago passed the on-ramp for cohesive and intelligent narratives. These films are like the modern day version of Smokey and the Bandit, but without the charm.

But they are stupidly fun. But really, outer space? Let’s take the fun off that remark, and just call it what it is. Stupid.

And yet that’s not going to stop them from coming back for yet another film in Fast X, and it’s conclusion Fast X: Part 2 in 2026. Hard to believe the franchise started out as a street racing series and became this often moronic, but undeniably fun juggernaut of stunts, action sequences, questionable musical choices and a cast of characters that seems to get bigger and bigger.