Anything Goes

In the hierarchical taxonomy of calamitous filmmaking, there emerges the occasional, unholy chimera, the likes of which are so fundamentally confounding that they stretch the boundaries of what was previously believed to be the limits of bad cinema. 'Fast X 2023', a frenetic blunderbuss from director Adam Antagonist, occupying a precarious equipoise of inanity and mediocrity, is such a movie. Attempting to shove the gas pedal of an already exhausted franchise further into the floor, 'Fast X 2023' crosses the finish line of self-parody, then retraces its steps, only to continue careening past the bounds of comprehension. A beguiling cocktail of overused tropes, incongruous storylines, and stupefying dialogue is the nightmarish foundation upon which this ill-begotten concoction stands. Narratively, the film takes inexplicable gambles, such as introducing a subplot involving time travel – presumably to recapture and exacerbate the youthful energy of previous installments. The tortured phantoms that chase our protagonists along their paradoxical and winding road are the ghosts of character development and consistency, neither of which had any part in the scripting stage of this film. The overtly sympathetic antagonist, portrayed with all the subtlety of a jackhammer by Vincent Vanquisher, is an amalgamation of misguided plot choices and gratuitous emoting. Vanquisher's performance – as if embodying a viper, a puma, and a grizzly bear in a flawed attempt at creating a formidable character – is jarring, tantalizingly reaching for the zenith of adequacy, but ultimately plummeting into the abyss of mediocrity. True to its predecessors, the picture has an almost religious devotion to the veneration of the automobile. Car chases, explosions, and impossible stunts have been the staple of the franchise, but in 'Fast X 2023', they are so haphazardly incanted that their presence transcends plausible deniability. An uncanny sense of déjà vu permeates throughout the film as it revisits past set-pieces. It is as if the film is caught in a state of arrested development, desperately seeking escape from the banality of its own making. Alas, the amalgamation of catastrophic narrative choices, insipid dialogue, and uninspired performances yields a film that could only be described as a symphony of disastrous filmmaking. 'Fast X 2023' crosses genres, demolishing the barriers that divide action, sci-fi, and comedy in search of – and simultaneously managing to misplace – the soul of the franchise. In conclusion, the attempt at reinvigorating this tried and much-maligned automobile-centered franchise is, lamentably, more of a train wreck than a vehicular triumph. The unchecked lunacy and chimerical vision of 'Fast X 2023' drives the franchise to a crash site of cinematic abhorrence, one from which recovery seems arduous, if not outright dubious. As it trundles unhinged and unstoppable into the nether realms of moviemaking ignominy, the audience, too, is left with the turbulent aftertaste of having been a witness to the deplorable.