Fast & Furious 9 Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

2. The Stakes Are Officially Non-Existent

It's often said that the Fast and Furious films are more like superhero movies at this point, and it's a tough claim to argue with.

Especially when you consider how any semblance of stakes has been jettisoned out of the window in the increasingly ridiculous later movies.

But F9 takes this to self-parodying extremes with the sheer number of ways characters - especially Dom - should die from their injuries, and yet survive with nary a scratch.

Though Roman (Tyrese Gibson) has an entire subplot devoted to him debating the team's apparent "invincibility," it mostly feels like Lin and Casey trying to hang a lampshade on the fact that it's tough to get invested in all this carnage when the threat of death is close to nil.

And as fun as it was to have Han (Sung Kang) back in the fold, his resurrection really only underlines the fact that death means absolutely nothing in these movies.

At this point, would it even surprise anyone if Gal Gadot's Gisele was revealed to have survived her apparently fatal fall in the sixth film?