You ever been hit on the head so hard you become a flamboyant gay man? This is the foundational moment of Jason Momoa in Fast X. He’s our new baddie and queer coded so hard that it goes back around to being good again. Ursula for the new millennium. He spends a lot of time doing sassy evil antics. Like some sorta turbo Mean Girls antagonist. Like they’ve distilled all the elements of petty evil from your high school bullies and put them into a 6’4″ statue, who just likes painting his nails. Momoa is having a great time. The levity he brings matches the real tone of these films, not the one enforced by Vin Diesel.

Few franchises have such a scattershot approach to naming their films as Fast and the Furious. The forth film was just Fast & Furious, there was also Furious 7 and F9. It’s not confusing, you see Vin Diesel scowling and an airborne vehicle? It is a Fast and the Furious movie. This time it’s Fast X, you will have to decide for yourself if that’s Fast exe or Fast ten, I’m in the first camp, x is the cool letter.

I’d say it’s a shame that the franchise found its best villain so late, Fast X being the supposed blowout climax. However it’s now part one of a three part Fast finale, there are at least 6 hours and two more parts to this story. I think they should call the next one ‘And The X‘, so that the last one can be ‘Furious X‘. It could be an xXx crossover. This installment also set up another Hobs and Shaw film and bought back some tent pole should-be-dead characters, so I suspect there are many more furious tales to be told. Maybe they’ll distract Vin Diesel with some close up magic and make them while his back is turned.

The movie has this self reflective streak. Literally. There are multiple times where characters just look at stills or video, clearly pulled from previous films in the franchise. Some of them remark on their favourite heists or action sequences, it’s kinda amazing. The meta contextual Fast and Furious we never knew we wanted. Broken up by Momoa turning to camera with smirk and a wink. It’s loaded up with flashbacks and retcons too, which adds to the clip show, “Hi I’m Troy McClure” vibe. Like the characters exist in a Fast and the Furious Platos cave where all the movies are looping simultaneously. Between these reveries are plenty of subplots and capers. John Cena is in a spy kids movie and it’s delightful ‘scenes of mild peril’ stuff. He teaches Vin Diesel’s son how to murder, but in a playful way. He likes the 90’s and drives a small car. Hilarious, no notes.

Vin Diesel is, predictably, in an entirely different film. There’s no levity when he’s on screen, everything is catholicism (ever notice how catholic this franchise is?), family and cars. He has hushed serious conversations with brand new characters, who have been reverse engineered into the heart of the franchise, created just for this purpose. It’s so dissident with everything else, characters go from their weird fun side quests to roadkill for Diesel’s main journey into sadness whenever their paths cross. Momoa does work with Diesel, twisting his characterisation towards psychopathic to meet the tone. Re-hinging his chiseled jaw, he stops chewing on the scenery and starts playing off Diesel’s stoicism. I’m cautiously looking forward to more of this, maybe not two more films of it? But they’ve actually really got something here. Maybe seeking out all the clips and references gave some perspective, helped them find a more ironic, better fitting tone. Even if they can’t find a crack in Vin Diesel; he must be 10,000% serious by contract.

If I was going to give it a rating? 10/X or X/10, pick your poison.