Fast X

The Theology of Gasoline

If cinema is a dream, the *Fast & Furious* saga has long since evolved into a fever hallucination. Somewhere between the early days of stealing DVD players and the recent excursions into outer space, these films ceased to be about street racing and became a modern mythology of impossible physics. With *Fast X*, the tenth entry in this breathless odyssey, the series finally stops running from its own absurdity and instead embraces it with a kind of operatic grandeur. Under the stewardship of director Louis Leterrier—who stepped into the driver’s seat after Justin Lin’s abrupt departure—the film feels less like a cohesive narrative and more like a maximalist collage of motion, noise, and the persistent, almost religious invocation of "Family."

To critique *Fast X* on the grounds of realism is to critique a dali painting for melting clocks; it misses the point entirely. Leterrier understands that the visual language of this saga is one of weightlessness. In the standout sequence set in Rome, a spherical neutron bomb rolls through the streets like a pinball from hell, bouncing off the Vatican with a kinetic joy that defies gravity, logic, and urban planning. It is a scene of pure, unadulterated chaos, visually stunning not because it looks real, but because it feels like a child’s imagination given a hundred-million-dollar budget. The camera swoops and dives, treating cars not as machines, but as extensions of the characters’ souls.

However, the film’s true engine is not under the hood of a Dodge Charger, but in the friction between its two central performances. Vin Diesel, returning as the gruff patriarch Dominic Toretto, plays the role with the solemnity of a marble statue. He delivers lines about protection and legacy with a messianic heaviness, his performance anchoring the film in a melodramatic sincerity that borders on self-parody. Dom is the immovable object, a man for whom a barbecue is a sacrament.

Enter the unstoppable force: Jason Momoa as Dante Reyes. If Diesel is the film’s superego, Momoa is its unchecked id. Dressed in lavender silks and scrunchies, painting the toenails of corpses and giggling through mass destruction, Dante is a villain unlike any other in the series. He is not merely seeking revenge for the events of *Fast Five*; he is deconstructing the very ethos of the saga. He mocks the sanctity of "Family," turning Dom’s greatest strength into a tactical vulnerability. Momoa plays the character with a flamboyance that recalls Heath Ledger’s Joker, but filtered through the lens of a telenovela. He is having more fun than anyone else on screen, and his nihilistic glee provides a necessary counterweight to Diesel’s suffocating stoicism.

The narrative, admittedly, groans under its own ambition. The script attempts to weave together a sprawling ensemble cast—scattered from London to Antarctica—leaving little room for genuine character development outside of the central duel. The plot is a series of contrivances designed to move characters from one action set piece to the next, often resurrecting the dead or rewriting history with a casual shrug. Yet, in the final act, as Dom drives down the face of a dam while it explodes around him, the film achieves a kind of transcendence. It asks us to suspend not just our disbelief, but our cynicism.

*Fast X* leaves its audience dangling on a literal and metaphorical cliffhanger, a resolute declaration that this story is far from over. It is a film that refuses to tap the brakes, careening toward a horizon where cars can fly and family conquers physics. It is loud, preposterous, and frequently unintelligible, but in the clash between Diesel’s sermonizing and Momoa’s anarchy, it finds a strange, combustion-fueled heartbeat.