Fast & FUrioUs 8
The very definition of a family film.
Eight films in, is blockbuster action cinema’s goofiest ride at risk of being outrun by smarter vehicles? The prologue implies as much, with Vin Diesel’s Dom almost out-raced. Until, at the last minute, he slams into reverse and wins by a whisker, wheels on fire. Likewise, Fast & Furious 8 works at its silliest, but spends too long dawdling behind competitors on a bungled plot.
Charlize Theron drips camp menace as hacker Cipher, though restricting her to spouting script-ese (“Hack ’em all!”) seems oddly wasteful. Dom’s rogue conversion channels Captain America: Civil War, weakly, while the groaning, vehicle tug-of-war looks car-thritic besides Baby Driver’s slinky moves.
Redemption arrives when director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) embraces the ridiculous. The set-up is pure Swordfish, but the ‘zombie cars’ sequence revels in joyful absurdity.
Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham spar with camp-macho winks, their willy-waving banter only bettered by a scene involving Statham, a skullbusting scrap and a baby. “Where’s that smile?” Stath coos at the nipper.
Even if the cars-vs-sub climax exhausts all ways of screeching over the top, F&F8 banks a reprieve by gamely attacking its popcorn mission: to leave you grinning. Well-stocked extras gush loudly about cars, stunts, Cuba and – no, do you think? – family. Kevin Harley