‘Fast and Furious’ Films Ranked

variety.com:

Joe Leydon Film CriticHard to believe this whole thing got started by street racers hijacking truckloads of DVD players and TV/VCR combos.When “The Fast and The Furious” zoomed into theaters in Summer 2001, it initially was greeted by many critics (including yours truly) as a flashily entertaining but instantly forgettable recycling of characters and conventions from decades-old B-movies about hot rods and cool cats. (Even its title was cribbed from a 1954 Roger Corman opus.) Who could have imagined it would spawn no fewer than nine sequels and a stand-alone spin-off?

Or that the increasingly faster and more furious franchise would evolve into a series of sci-fi-influenced capers involving a blue collar “Mission: Impossible” team?With the arrival this week of “Fast X,” purportedly the first film in a triptych that will conclude the decades-old saga, Variety updated the least-to-best ranking of all the “F&F” films.

But be forewarned: Like the franchise itself, the new and improved list time-trips a bit. Well, actually, a lot. It may sound counterintuitive to describe a movie with so much cacophonously chaotic smash-and-crash commotion as dull, but… Well, let’s just say that during the long stretches between the big blow-ups here, you’re painfully aware that time is passing and confusion is rampant.

Given that the franchise long ago rocketed over entire flotillas of sharks, it’s hardly surprisingly that this new episode is swaggeringly absurd in its plotting as Dom (Vin Diesel) and just about every other character introduced in earlier films are targeted for grievous bodily harm by Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the vengeful son of the Brazilian crime lord killed way back in “Fast Five.” (Momoa is slipped into a revised.