Fast & Furious 2009

Critics score:
28 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Ben Lyons, At the Movies: This is more of the same. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: The good news is that the movie's speedy and strong enough to deliver some well-tuned excitement, even if it's as bulky and brainlessly bright as the muscle cars it celebrates. Read more

Nathan Lee, New York Times: This example of presummer pop diversion will be best appreciated by future audiences flabbergasted by its unabashed revelry in fossil-fuel consumption. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: Even the most mundane lives occasionally sparkle with moments of exhilaration, and so does Moscow, Belgium. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: A franchise that started as a corrective for distressing action-movie trends becomes what it started out hating. Time for something new. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: By the fourth installment of the franchise, Fast & Furious has shed two articles from its title, regained the four original lead actors, and turned shamelessly into a monotonous unofficial edition of the Grand Theft Auto gaming series. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: A strange piece of nostalgia, where, without apology, fast cars still rule and fuel is burned with abandon. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This franchise is out of gas. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: In the jammed landscape of mass-market new releases, it offers an attractive getaway route from self-importance, snark, and chatty comedies about male bonding. Here, stick shifts do the talking. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: Though I admit the title of the film is slightly dumb, I can't really fault much else going on here. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Noise, noise, noise. Crunched metal and shattered glass. More noise. Revving engines. Vin Diesel's giant head. Hot chicks in tight miniskirts. Even more noise. The end. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: The stars are back in the fourth installment of this fast-cars/hot-chicks series, which tells you a little something about the rocky roads their careers have traveled since 2001's original film. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: This means many loud racing sequences (ably directed by Justin Lin) that look like the very video games inspired by these movies: candy-colored automobiles, digital dashboards and automated female voices. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: People who want nothing more out of a movie than an extended rap video -- there's lots of hip-hop, close-ups of cars, and women in shiny tiny shorts -- may be satisfied. But this movie isn't much more than a re-do of the first film in the series. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Like a lemon that's been tricked out with a fancy paint job, Fast & Furious won't stand up to much scrutiny under the hood. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: The stars look bored out of their minds when the fourth episode of the franchise stalls between racing sequences, which is all too often in a flick where 106 minutes speed by in what feels like at least four hours. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: A tepid, repetitive and digitally augmented hot cars-hot women thriller that might probably won't give Vin Diesel and Paul Walker the career boost that The Fast and the Furious did. Read more

David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquirer: Fast & Furious succeeds because the action is supercharged in a style that recalls Mel Gibson's apocalyptic classic, The Road Warrior. The characters are more than cartoonish, and the plot grips the road. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The end result, while it provides moments of kinetic entertainment, is too repetitive and uneven to be satisfying. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Fast & Furious is exactly and precisely what you'd expect. Nothing more, unfortunately. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Director Justin Lin still hasn't learned film geography. Even the kinetic tunnel races, meant to nitrocharge the movie, fall flat from spatial incoherence. You barely know what's happening, and to whom. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Fast & Furious spends a lot of time advertising how exciting it is, without actually being exciting. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Aside from the opening sequence, there's nothing imaginative about it, and the actual filming is routine shaky-quick-cut stuff. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Everything that happens here happened in the three previous chapters -- and in Cannonball Run, for that matter. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Diesel is still charismatic thug Dominic Toretto, Walker is still determined cop Brian O'Conner, and the story is still dumb. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: Like Brian and Dom, Fast & Furious would benefit from more female company. And Vin Diesel's mumbling sulk gets to be a drag after a while. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It's time for these car fiends to slam the heap into 'park.' Diesel should use his ESP powers to find a better gig with a franchise that still has some gas -- such as maybe The Pacifier 2? Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Boiled down to its essentials, F&F is four pretty swell auto-race video games encased in the bloated carcass of a script, by Chris Morgan, that must have been researched in the Archive of Movie Cliches. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: Turn off your mind, though, and there's some fun to be had from some of the better whizz-bang sequences. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Feels about as fresh and lively as a piece of burnt rubber. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: By far the weakest entry of the four. Read more

Nicolas Rapold, Village Voice: Fast & Furious reconfirms that car-chase movies -- good, bad, or mediocre -- all assume the future employment of the quaint old fast-forward button. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: The reunion is fun and frantic, like the original on double nitro. Read more