The Fate of the Furious

So I guess these movies are basically Michael Bay films in disguise now, huh?

The Fate of the Furious, the eighth (!) iteration in the hit billion dollar franchise sees a new villain in the form of Cipher (Charlize Theron), a cyber-terrorist and criminal mastermind, do the unthinkable: turn series protagonist Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) into a bad guy. With Dom reluctantly embracing his criminal past and doing Cipher’s bidding at every turn, Dom’s “family” is effectively shaken to their core, grasping at straws as they try to understand his betrayal while simultaneously trying to figuring out a way to take Cipher down for good. Enter Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the villain from the previous entry in the series, as he is recruited to stop Dom and Cipher at all costs, a new addition which most people on the team – especially Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) – are having a hard time wrapping their heads around. With Dom in Cipher’s pocket and his old crew at a severe disadvantage, it’s a race against the clock to stop Cipher in her tracks and somehow wrestle Dom back from her icy clutches before he’s too far gone to be saved at all.

The first full film without the late Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner sharing the spotlight, The Fate of the Furious is exactly what you’ve come to expect at this point in the franchise’s life-span: a balls-to-the wall action flick hindered by the absolutely insane shit happening onscreen but also somehow strengthened by it. Any idea of racing cars in this series is long gone, replaced by CGI fueled set pieces that defy all logic and sense (that self-driving car scene in particular was just plain stupid to me), but I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun to watch.

New director to the series F. Gary Gray does about what you’d expect from the well oiled machine that this franchise has become, showing little risk in his direction and really only shining when the action scenes are front and center. The core of this series has always been about family, and while this entry arguably touches on that idea more than any other sequel thus far, the story still takes a backseat to everything else happening onscreen. There’s a couple of great non-action scenes sprinkled throughout – namely any scene with Statham and Johnson in it – but the script seems to only care enough about these scenes for a few minutes at a time, abruptly changing course to yet another ridiculous action scene almost immediately, thus giving any real story beats or character arcs barely any time to breathe.

Theron is decent enough as the new villain this time around, but does little more than bark orders from behind the scenes and make Dom’s life a living hell, and while the motivation behind Dom’s betrayal is solid, the script does our character’s plight no favors when the entire resolution to Dom breaking bad is a simple nod to his fellow teammates as a submarine comes crashing through an icy wasteland behind them. So my question is this: what’s the point of taking such liberties with Dom’s character going rogue if everyone can forgive him right away without even understanding the reasoning behind it all? Why dedicate the entire first three quarters of the film to this storyline when Dom can swoop in and in two seconds flat go “my b”, and have it all be swept under the rug? Seems a little dumb and lazy even by Fast and Furious standards.

Other than that, the cast is as solid as always ranging from mildly annoying (Tyrese’s Roman Pierce as usual) to just kind of being there (newcomer Scott Eastwood’s Eric Reisner). Everyone else is basically acting on autopilot at this point, with each having just enough to do onscreen to warrant their inclusion. I will say that it’s kind of fun seeing how everyone’s dynamic has slowly morphed and evolved – however subtle it may be – from way back in Fast Five to what is presented here, and since the theme of family plays a key role across all films in this franchise, it’s nice to see that even if the plot and action sequences meander and stumble on occasion, we can rely on these familiar faces and characters to remind us that even if we don’t like what’s happening onscreen, there’s still something worth watching these films for.

While not my least favorite film in the franchise, The Fate of the Furious definitely ranks in the lower half of my list mostly because I don’t know how I feel about this series becoming a James Bond flick complete with “save the world/city” storylines. More importantly, I don’t like the fact that there’s so much CGI mayhem lessening the impact of what’s really happening onscreen. Turning this franchise into a sort of Transformers movie instead of a live-action destruction derby (as it should be) is kind of annoying especially now that a film like John Wick can out action you on a fraction of your budget and still rake in millions while giving us real stunts and real destruction practically every minute. I don’t see why turning to post-production effects is the best way to go to wow audiences considering that this film is bound to make a shit-ton of money regardless of what the filmmakers put onscreen, but either way, being eight films in, this franchise is still solid enough to warrant the last two (as of now) planned sequels. I don’t think this was necessarily a great film nor an awful one, but at this point in time, does anyone really care enough to completely stop paying money to watch these films? I doubt it.