'Fast X' review: Franchise showing signs of wear and tear

There’s a fine line between what’s entertainingly implausible and what’s insulting to one’s intelligence, and the “Fast & Furious” movies have straddled it mostly successfully for two decades. In the previous film, “F9,” our hero Dominic Toretto, the car-thief turned special agent played by Vin Diesel, swung from a steel cable across a canyon in his car, like a hot-rod Tarzan. Believable? Not even remotely — but boy, what a great scene.

All action franchises must constantly outdo themselves with bigger stunts and wilder concepts (in “F9,” the characters literally went to outer space), and so here comes “Fast X,” reportedly the first in a final trilogy. The movie is packed with nearly every star in its universe (from John Cena to Helen Mirren) and introduces a new one, Jason Momoa, as Dante, a criminal mastermind who blames Dom for the death of his father (a callback to “Fast Five”). This series’ charm has always been its street-smart, upstart, just-having-fun vibe, but “Fast X” has none of that. In its attempts to knock our socks off with over-the-top set pieces, superhero-style bombast and soap-opera twists, “Fast X” sails right over that aforementioned line of plausibility.

Describing the plot would be a fool’s errand, but the upshot is that Dante is so bad that even the bad guys (Charlize Theron as the cybervillain Cipher, Jason Statham as former assassin Deckard Shaw) unite against him. There’s much globe-hopping, of course: Dom’s buddy Roman (Tyrese Gibson) leads a crew to Italy but ends up in London, while Dom himself races against Dante in Rio (cue the usual montage of female rumps in high-cut shorts). Every few minutes there is an invasion by the faceless soldiers of The Agency, which has mistakenly marked our heroes as terrorists. And eventually we learn that Dante’s real goal is to swipe Dom’s 8-year-old son, Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).

Momoa, best known as DC’s Aquaman, has a tough time bringing his showcase villain into focus. The film casts Dante first as a scowling Latin gangster, then as a satanic figure in a frock coat and finally as an effeminate rich kid with a sick streak — the kind of guy who responds to Dom’s jaw-shattering punch by pouting, “Ow, you big brute!” Momoa throws himself into the role, but in the end his Dante isn’t so much fearsome as irksome.

Director Louis Leterrier knows his way around a fast car (“The Transporter”), but here he has to rely on CGI to stage every outlandish scenario — a giant bouncing bomb, an exploding dam — and the result is a movie that never looks or feels real. The “Fast & Furious” franchise certainly isn’t ready for the junk heap yet. But after 22 years, it’s showing signs of wear and tear.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com