That Fast X Celebrity Cameo Is Everything Wrong With The Film
Contains spoilers for "Fast X"
"Fast & Furious" fans will surely be shocked by several actors making surprise appearances in "Fast X" — though there's at least one scene where that shock is sure to give way to frustration.
Finding themselves separated from Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and stranded without cash, resources, or their usual clandestine connections, Han (Sung Kang), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Tej (Ludacris) allow Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) to lead them to an old friend who can help them secure gear to finish their mission. That friend just so happens to be played by comedian, future "Transformers" star, and "Saturday Night Live" alum Pete Davidson.
Putting aside one's personal feelings about Davidson's acting abilities and bizarre pop culture ubiquity, the sequence is so pointless it borders on annoying. In addition to being blatantly manufactured simply for the sake of a celebrity cameo, the scene only diverts from the plot of a film already straining to make its thin premise fit a two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
Pete Davidson is great — manufactured tension isn't
For all its faults, it can at least be acknowledged that the "Fast & Furious" series has dedicated significant time to crafting the relationships between its characters. Unfortunately, "Fast X" almost never capitalizes on this to create meaningful, believable drama, and instead lazily throws together convoluted fight scenes based on superficial misunderstandings and a glaring insecurity that the audience won't engage with anything but action.
Pete Davidson's cameo scene is a perfect example of this on two fronts. First, a forgettably petty squabble leads to Tej and Roman getting into a surprisingly violent and protracted brawl with no winner and zero stakes. Second, the scene doesn't lead to any meaningful developments in the story, with Davidson merely betraying the group and forcing them to move on to their next potential gun vendor — Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham).
Shaw's entrance is also punctuated by an unnecessary fight between him and Han based on the hilariously knee-jerk assumption that Han is there to kill him. Around the same time, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) makes the baffling choice to attack Cipher (Charlize Theron) while they're both trying to escape an Agency black-site prison. These ham-handed moments of forced conflict betray a painfully underdeveloped story, almost certainly hindered by egotistical aspirations to extend this finale as long as possible.