The Fate of the Furious
It’s inevitable that at some point in the series, Vin Diesel is going to ‘go rogue’. James Bond has done it. Mission Impossible has done it. And so now, 8 films in it’s time for Dominic Toretto to get pulled away from his ‘family’ by Charlize Theron. And really, who can blame him?
As a film this is pretty standard issue stuff by now; big wacky stunts and loads of familiar faces having a good time, workshops full of cars and ‘toys’ and lots of planning big missions while talking about family. Other tropes you’ve seen a million times include EMPs, nuclear submarines and a villain who wants to start a war between nations.
The first half hour did catch me off guard however, because it involved actual street racing and a little bit of a distilled Cuban car-culture history lesson. I’m not one of those people who wants to see these films return to 2001, but it’s nice to see it go back to its roots a little bit.
After that it’s all mad action with guns, grenades and grapple hooks. It all plays out with varying degrees of entertainment value. Unfortunately most of the plot is driven by a battle between hackers, which is always fucking tedious to watch.
The baddie hacker is Charlize, who doesn’t get killed off or locked away so in true Fast & Furious style might well come back (although even death is never forever in this franchise). She’s got a double-edged sword of a role here; on the one hand she barely has to leave the one room for the whole film, but on the other hand she has to awkwardly kiss Vin Diesel in a scene that he definitely insisted on.
Scott Eastwood is now in this, as is Helen Mirren. The cast of characters is just fucking massive now and it’s starting to make everyone quite one-dimensional. Oh he’s the nerd, he’s got the jokes, she’s cool girl, she’s computer girl, he’s smart guy, he’s funny scared guy, he’s English guy etc etc.
Amusingly they’ve made a total dog’s dinner of the story that runs through the franchise, and watching them in such close succession is like watching some ‘and then’ improv. OK so Michelle Rodriguez is dead. Vin is with the hot cop lady now. Wait no Michelle isn’t dead. OK hot cop steps back out of respect. Maybe she’s with Dwayne The Rock Johnson? Oh shit guess what turns out she actually had a baby with Vin, didn’t tell Vin, but Charlize found out and has captured them and that’s the whole point of this, the 8th film.
The biggest offence in this regard is how quickly Jason Statham is allowed to become one of the family. He killed Han! Han is the guy who died in the third film, but we liked him so much we went back and made three prequels just so we could feature him. Then it turns out Jason Statham killed him, which is why he’s the villain in Furious 71. So to make him best buds with the crew now is quite the middle finger to those of us who have been watching since the start (at this point, probably just me).
This is a franchise that is creaking under the weight of its own history, and huge cast. You don’t have to keep adding characters! And if you kill someone off they have to stay dead! One of the big moments in this one involves someone getting shot dead, but how are we supposed to believe it?
In my experience so far the best way to enjoy these Fast & Furious films is purely at face value. The Rock ripping a concrete bench out of the ground, or breaking handcuffs open with sheer strength. Big car crashes. Driving onto planes (again). But the movies don’t want you to do that and instead are trying to spin a story that is frankly completely fucking mad. Just trying to follow it all is exhausting.