Movie Review: The Fate of the Furious

All roads have been leading to this. Or were they all leading to the last movie? Maybe they’re still leading up to the next one (or the one after that).

It’s hard to know where exactly we sit within the labyrinthine timeline of the Fast and Furious saga. Episodes one, two, four, five and six all took place before episode three (Tokyo Drift). Now, incorrigible brand guardian Vin Diesel is promising us that episode eight (The Fate of the Furious) of his inconsistently-titled franchise will be the start of a new trilogy.

All I know is this: Vin Diesel will outlive us all, and Fast 45 will play at our funerals. It will be about the imminent heat-death of the universe, and it will feature Tyrese’s great grandson, driving—furiously—into the sun. It will be considered slightly less absurd than the early instalments.

The Fate of the Furious is actually the biggest demarcation point for the series since Tokyo Drift, and much of that has to do with the unfortunate and tragic intrusion of reality. Paul Walker dying midway through the production of Furious 7 meant his character, Brian, had to literally ride off into the sunset with his wife Mia (Jordana Brewster) and child.

Dom Toretto (Diesel) is now the sole figurehead for his family of fast-driving criminals-turned-spies, yet even that family has been winnowed down following key deaths at the end of Fast and Furious 6. That explains why the previous film’s baddie, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), is recruited to join Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson, always a pleasure), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) for their next mission. Never mind he flat out murdered their good friend Han. If you kill a member of Dom’s fam, you’re done for… unless you demonstrate respect for your own family, as Shaw does. Dom’s ethos is incoherently consistent.

F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) helms this latest venture, again written by Chris Morgan, which sees Dom turn on his family after being blackmailed by Charlize Theron’s dreadlocked super-hacker Cipher. She forces him to steal some nukes for her, keeping him prisoner on her “ghost” plane, populated entirely by people with the worst haircuts you’ve ever seen. This is surely the greatest insult producer Vin could imagine. What a waste of such beautiful locks.

The rest of his spurned family, working for Kurt Russell’s government spook Mr. Nobody, team with ex-jailbird Deckard to locate Dom and figure out why he’s flipped. They face off against one another in the streets of New York, under a literal deluge of cars raining down from rooftops, operated remotely by Cipher. They have a rematch in Russia’s deep freeze. A submarine gets involved. It’s a whole thing.

You have to admire F&F’s commitment to putting cars at its centre, regardless of setting. What used to be a tool for street racing is now the ultimate weaponry for hackers, agents of espionage and terrorists. I can’t even get mine to play my iPhone without an aux cable, but fine.

Gray, taking over from James Wan and Justin Lin, carries over their legacy of stretching the bounds of logic with delight. (The CGI is also more convincing, meaning it’s harder to differentiate between actual insane stunts and computerised concoctions.) Cars don’t move the way they’re meant to. Bodies don’t move the way they’re meant to (particularly in a brutal prison chase-fight between Johnson and Statham). Time doesn’t move the way it’s meant to. The Fate of the Furious takes place in some kind of netherspace, where the Earth spins differently, nothing weighs as it should and everybody speaks ludicrously. There are worse places to spend 136 minutes.

Undeniably, without the ‘let’s get the gang together’ feel of the earlier heist flicks, F8 lacks some of the inherent joy of its immediate predecessors. You would think Diesel and the rest of his producing crew would understand better than most that splintering the stars is antithetical to what has made their best movies work. (We do not need to return to the age of 2 Fast 2 Furious.)

However, it gives us a unique gift: Vin Diesel’s finest performance of the series. He is shaken from his regular posturing by Cipher’s cruel games, and for once we see panic register on his face. At times, he gets to be gentle and affectionate. Other times, enraged. Like it or not, Diesel is a recognisable icon, and rarely would a granite structure like him agree to be compromised, or vulnerable. Vin Diesel does great, affecting work in The Fate of the Furious. Yes, that’s a ridiculous sentence to write.

3/5

In cinemas April 13. Rated M for action violence and coarse language.

Photo: Universal