Fast X is the tenth main Fast & Furious film and the eleventh overall, and it carries the weight of both numbers. Louis Leterrier directs from a screenplay by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin, who co-wrote the story with Zach Dean. It runs 142 minutes. Vin Diesel returns as Dominic Toretto, and Jason Momoa arrives as Dante Reyes, the son of Hernan Reyes, hunting revenge for his father’s death and the loss of the family fortune ten years earlier.
The tagline is “The end of the road begins.” The film means it as a promise. What it delivers is a beginning that never gets to end.
Trailer, via The Fast Saga.
A $378.8 Million Production
The net production budget is estimated at $378.8 million, which makes Fast X the sixth-most expensive film ever made. That money is on the screen in the Rome sequence, where a DM-79 sub-nautical neutron mine is released into the streets and Dom pushes it into the Tiber River to limit the damage. It is on the screen in the Rio race, where Dante kills Diogo with a bomb attached to his Porsche 911 after Dom chooses to save Isabel.
It is not on the screen in anything that resolves.
Dom Toretto and the Manhunt
The plot sets up a clean machine. Dante has turned Cipher’s crew against her by kidnapping their families. He has manipulated Dom’s team into a mission the Agency never ordered. Aimes, the Agency’s de facto leader since Mr. Nobody’s disappearance, assumes Dom’s team caused the Rome bombing and orders a manhunt.
So the family scatters. Jakob, Dom and Mia’s brother, rescues Mia and Little B from Agency agents and takes the boy to Portugal. Tess, Mr. Nobody’s daughter, uses God’s Eye to find Dom in Naples and tells him Dante is in Rio. Letty is taken into custody in Rome, and the film never returns a verdict on her — no charge is resolved, no case is closed, and the story simply moves on without her.
Every one of these is a thread. Fast X ties none of them.
“[Dom] has fought so hard to keep faith and protect family [but] there is a price to pay. His enemies are coming after him”
That is Leterrier, in an interview, describing what the film is about. It is the most accurate description of Fast X available, and it is more coherent than the film that contains it.
Jason Momoa as Dante
Momoa is the reason to watch. Dante pursues revenge for his father’s death and the loss of their fortune, and the film gives him the room to be a genuine threat rather than a mirror of Dom. The character emerges from the shadows of the past, as the synopsis puts it, and Momoa plays him as something the franchise has not had before.
The rest of the cast is doing what the franchise asks. Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, John Cena, Scott Eastwood, Daniela Melchior and Alan Ritchson all appear. Emmanuel said her character would see increased involvement in Fast X compared to the previous films. That is true. It is also not enough to make Ramsey matter.
The Trouble Behind the Camera
The production history explains some of this. Development on a tenth main film began by October 2020, with Lin returning to direct. Principal photography started in April 2022, and Lin left as director later that month, citing creative differences, though he kept writing and producing credits. Leterrier was hired a week later and did several uncredited rewrites. Filming ran until that August across London, Rome, Turin, Lisbon and Los Angeles.
That is a film assembled under pressure. Fast X feels assembled under pressure. Brian Tyler returns to score it, and the score does what it can.
The franchise has survived worse. It has also, until now, always ended with the family intact and the road open. Fast X ends with the road closed and the family scattered, which is a bolder choice than the film knows how to use.
What the Tenth Film Actually Proves
Here is the part worth watching. Fast X was built as the first half of a two-part culmination, a structure Diesel announced in June 2021. It spends 142 minutes setting up a conclusion it does not deliver. Dwayne Johnson ruled out returning as Luke Hobbs in December 2021 and called a Diesel Instagram post asking for his return “manipulation”. He ultimately reprised the role in a mid-credits scene cameo. Keanu Reeves was originally approached to play Aimes before Ritchson was cast.
None of that is the problem. The problem is that a $378.8 million film with this cast, this budget and this villain should not feel like a trailer for itself. Momoa’s Dante is a real creation. The Rome set piece is a real set piece. The Rio race has real stakes. Everything around them is administration.
Fast X is not a bad film. It is an incomplete one, and it asks audiences to pay full price for half a story. That was a bet the franchise made on its own history. It is a bet that gets harder to win each time the road restarts.
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