Fast X ends on a cliffhanger.

That’s a minor spoiler, but it’s also important you know this when entering into the latest instalment in the billion dollar-grossing Fast & Furious series, which more so than any previous entry in the franchise is not so much a movie as a sequence of events.

The “beginning” is perfunctory – a brief rehash of events from 2011’s Fast Five, retrofitted to introduce Jason Momoa’s new villain Dante Reyes into proceedings – and the ending is non-existent, all pay-off held back for an inevitable 11th film. Fast X is comprised entirely of middle – some of it utterly misses the mark and some of it works spectacularly well, action cinema so exhilarating you’ll be whooping in the aisles.

“Family” might be as much at the forefront of this Fast movie as any other – with Rita Moreno and Helen Mirren adding a touch of class as, respectively, the previously unseen grandmother of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Queenie Shaw, now effectively Dom’s surrogate mother – but the splintered structure of Fast X sees the franchise’s key players more fractured than ever before, occupying separate plot strands which run parallel but never gel across the film’s 141-minute runtime.

The end result is a movie which serves up extreme highs and lows. Easily the most successful element is the core plot which sees Dom targeted by psychotic antagonist Reyes, who’s on a mission of vengeance after the Fast family offed his father Hernan (Joaquim de Almeida) in Fast Five. A flamboyant Momoa, aping Heath Ledger’s Joker, is without question this movie’s most valuable player – Fast X is immeasurably more fun whenever he’s on screen – and this thread, which sees Dom’s loved ones threatened, also brings the best out of Diesel, who delivers his most committed performance in the saga’s recent history.