Review - "The Fate of the Furious"

The Fate of the Furious - directed by F. Gary Gray

Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell, Jason Statham, Scott Eastwood, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Helen Mirren, Michelle Rodriguez, Elsa Pataky, Tyrese Gibson, Lucas Black, Ludacris 

Screenplay: Chris Morgan

Music Score by: Bryan Tyler

Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon

Edited by: Paul Rubell & Christian Wagner
Running Time: 136 minutes
Language: English
Rated: M - Violence, Profanity 

I have a love / hate relationship with the Fast & Furious franchise.
Or more accurately a sliding shades of grey scale of love-hate

Love 5, don't care much for 6, 7 or 2 and the others are just fine.

Part 7 was of course a juggernaut taking in over a billion and a half dollars.

Star Paul Walker died during production and the re-writes and re-shoots required to bang the movie into shape appear only to have helped its box office fortunes.

But for me it is the worst offender for the sort of unnecessary dumbness that pervades many of the films in the series and that prevents me from getting too excited for each new part.

Note that I said 'unnecessary' dumbness because I realise that being big, dumb action flicks is central to the success of the series.

But I go back to part 5 which is a smartly constructed, brilliantly directed action movie.

There is nothing too over the top and everything makes sense at least in the context of the universe that the movies exist.

Now we come to the eighth installment which makes the Furious movies the Friday the 13th of the action genre.
Like it's hockey-mask sporting cousin (also a Paramount franchise) the Fast and Furious movies basically ran out of ideas before the first film faded to black so they just remade the same film over and over again with plots of ever decreasing believability.
This one really pushes it though.
Family has always been a thing for these movies and allowing the villain from the previous film to be positioned as a new member of said family this time despite his having murdered one of the family members previously is akin to telling viewers of a magic trick to pretend that the visible wires are not there.
So as expected the 'who gives a shit about reason or believability?' credo is alive and well in this film.
I have just about made my peace with it so that is fine enough.
I give credit to F Gary Gray's film in the action stakes though.
He directs "The Fate of the Furious" always with an eye to the geography and the stakes and that is not always the case with this series.
The shots, the editing and the pacing are very, very good.

There are effectively only three action scenes in this film but each one is pretty big in scale.
The trailers might lead you to believe that shootouts are going to be making a return but other than a couple of brief flourishes of assault rifle the action is all vehicular.
That is a broad use of the word though as vehicles here count as everything from stripped down cars to hotted up supercars to tanks, jeeps and nuclear submarines.
The vehicles are afforded far more character than their human counterparts so we must just accept that Jason Statham's Deckard can flip-flop from hard nosed villain to big sook goodie and that Charlize Theron's techno-mastermind Cypher is just that good at everything and anything with a chip in it.
It does allow for a very nicely shot scene in which she 'hacks' a bunch of self drive cars however.
Cypher is basically a Bond villain complete with high-tech lair (in this case an AWACS aircraft that she flies precisely to avoid satellite eyes)
To me Theron is completely wasted as a talent here - she isn't given nearly enough to do.

Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto ('Dom') gets what is perhaps the least believable and the most predictable character arc.  He is pitched as the bad guy this time as he turns his back not only on the love of his life Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) but on his entire team (actually really his 'family' of course)

Of course there is a reason for it and of course he is doing it under duress but replaying exactly the same storyline that Letty had from the fourth movie is lazy in the extreme.

Will anyone care though?

Aren't we just here for big, dumb action?

I guess so and accordingly what is delivered does just fine.

This movie is never dull and has enough humour in it to make it pretty entertaining.

Scott Eastwood gets to play a weird sort of mini-me to Kurt Russell's Mr Nobody and has a host of back and forth insult gags with Tyrese Gibson's Roman.

And then there is Helen Mirren completely stealing the couple of scenes that she is in as a character whose identity and purpose I will not spoil.

She is very, very good indeed.

I feel like the Christmas Grinch criticising these movies for being over the top and dumb when obviously that is the point.

But I cannot help but think that if Vin Diesel surrendered the franchise to Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham it would be all the better for it.
Diesel seems to be all ego but ironically he isn't remotely the reason to see this film (nor I would argue any of the preceding ones) and Johnson and Statham have better chemistry, better lines and are far more fun to watch.

Interesting to note that despite recent attempts to pour cold water on the rumours of tension between Diesel and Johnsons they share the same screen space exactly one time and only for about 3 seconds.

If the dispute is real and results in Johnson's departure it would be a real shame as I enjoyed his character greatly and what I wouldn't give to see a movie just about Deckard and Hobbs!
There is no way to argue that this series doesn't deliver exactly what the box promises and as such this film is perfectly fine for what it is.
I just wish that there was more weight to the danger and the action.  When characters can switch from bad to good to bad and back again and even those thought dead can come back to life there is no real sense of characters being at any real risk

"The Fate of the Furious" is a big, dumb action movie that is just about smart enough about the execution to make up for its lack of originality or sense.

NB: There is no end credits scene at all

RATING: 72 / 100

CONCLUSION: Exactly the movie you'd expect based on the previous entries and to be fair the direction is better than on the last two.  The cast is great even if the characters are less so.  Nowhere near the series' high point fifth entry but it's not boring.