Fast & Furious 10 sloppily reveals that Hernan’s son Dante (Jason Momoa) was present during that whole chase scene and, after seeing his family’s ill-gotten fortune destroyed and his father killed, has re-emerged to wage war on Dom (Vin Diesel) – the ringleader of the world’s premier group of car thieves/international spies – promising no death while suffering is owed.
His motivation for revenge may be clear, and Fast & Furious 10 hammers his anti-Dom stance home at every turn, but the ways in which Dante brings that vengeance to bear on the Fast Family are as erratic as Dante himself.
It’s only through technology and mercenary forces that he is somehow able to amass that he’s able to do much of anything. He wants to make Dom suffer by hurting his family but routinely ignores opportunities to twist the knife in ways that read as less patiently sadistic and more justly… ineffective.
The looseness of the character demanded an actor ready to exploit that in their performance, and Momoa showed up to be set hungry.
Dante’s effectiveness as an antagonist aside, the boundless chaos energy Momoa sustains throughout Fast & Furious 10 is the one consistently enjoyable element. There’s no other way to say it: Dante’s a real freak, and Momoa flies that flag with gusto. It feels like he’s marathoned all these movies and parodies Dom’s machismo and predictable logic at every turn, both to Dom’s face and he’s completely alone. It’s the private moments of goatee-twirling that set Dante apart from other villains in the series to date, and Momoa deserves a huge amount of credit for keeping Fast & Furious 10 from sinking under its own weight.
Fast & Furious 10 is the beginning of the end, but the race to the end of that beginning is a bumpy ride. Momoa’s bonkers performance as Dante Reyes deserves instant canonization on the Mt. Rushmore of Fast & Furious villains, but that feels like the one differentiating element of this movie.
There’s not enough barbeque at the table to go around Dom Toretto’s ever-growing family, and director Louis Leterrier is not able to walk the tightrope between excess and self-awareness that modern Fast films demand.
There’s still time for the Fast franchise to cross the finish line first, but this flat tyre of a “part one” will make the last lap a nailbiter.
– IGN Africa