Fate of the Furious runs out of gas
Gas-fuelled Furious series running out of steam
THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS ★★ out of 5 Cast: Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez Director: F. Gary Gray Duration: 2 h 16 min
The long-running Fast, Furious franchise turns 16 this year, which means it’s old enough to drive itself, though perhaps not mature enough. Fate is number 8 (because rhymes) and there are already two more in the works, set for release in 2019 and 2021, and raising the question of whether the world will run out of oil before the series runs out of steam.
Based on this chapter, my money’s on steam. The simply named Furious 7, which came out two years ago, was a stupid/ fun popcorn movie full of jawdropping stunts. I enjoyed it immensely. The Fate of the Furious, by the same screenwriter (Chris Morgan), ups the stunts but trades the fun for an extra helping of stupid. It’s like food poisoning for your mind.
It starts off promisingly, with a street race along the candycoloured boulevards of Havana between Dom (Vin Diesel) and a local thug. They pit their cars against each other in a “Cuban Mile,” which I think means you’re allowed to finish the race even if you’re travelling backwards and on fire. But once the main plot gets rolling, the movie’s problems pile up like cars on an icy highway.
First Dom gets hijacked by a mysterious woman named Cipher (Charlize Theron), who turns him against the rest of his team and somehow steals his acting chops in the process — he looks like Mount Rushmore if you told it to calm down. Next, Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) finds himself thrown into a maximum-security prison alongside his old nemesis Deckard (Jason Statham). They escape by basically starting a prison riot inside another prison riot.
The rest of the gang — Michelle Rodriguez as Dom’s wife; Chris (Ludacris) Bridges as the tech expert; Nathalie Emmanuel as the hacker they saved in the last movie; Tyrese Gibson as comic relief — must now work together to defeat Cipher’s Bond-worthy evil plans, and to figure out why Dom is helping her. They’re aided by a shadowy government agent (Kurt Russell) and his less shadowy henchman (Scott Eastwood). Is in any wonder this film clocks in at more than two hours?
Cipher’s needlessly complicated plans take our heroes to the streets of New York — the heat-packing district, if I’m not mistaken — and to a frozen Russian naval base where, if you’ve managed to avoid the trailers, I won’t spoil anything except to say you may experience brain freeze. Or maybe that explains what happened to director F. Gary Gray, whose past work — Straight Outta Compton, The Italian Job — suggests he can do better.
Certainly there’s no need to spend so much time with Theron’s character as she yells at her subordinates to “do something!” or whispers throatily to Dom that he has no choice but to follow her orders or else. The camera may love her, but this kind of attention borders on the unhealthy.
Oh, I did I mention there’s a fight scene and a shootout involving a baby? Or that we meet Deckard’s mom, who sounds like Eliza Doolittle? Or that everyone and his brother — or in Deckard’s case, ‘is bruvva — makes a speech about the importance of family? (The Dodge family certainly seems important to the film.) Or that the series continues its habit of having its heroes survive apparently unsurvivable crashes, without even an airbag in sight?
All this and two more films to go. That’s a given, because in spite of the preposterous nature of this latest chapter, the one law of physics that works for it is Newton’s Second. Even if you were to put the brakes on now, stopping distance guarantees it’s going to keep going for quite a while yet. And who knows? It might even get entertaining again.
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you — those are cars trying to outrun a submarine in one of the clips from this week’s The Fate of the Furious.
And nope, you’re not dreaming — Dwayne Johnson’s Agent Hobbs actually diverts a torpedo with his bare hands in another snippet from the trailer.
The latest instalment in the Furious franchise will also see the villainous Cipher (Charlize Theron) send cars flying out of buildings and Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto behind the wheel as his ride goes up in flames.
For a series that ups the ante on death-defying stunts with each new entry, the Furious films — now on number 8 — are going to have to send cars into space for episodes 9 and 10 (yes, those are happening and no, gravity and physics do not apply to the Fast flicks).
Before we see any of that, we rounded up the biggest stunts from the previous seven entries to give our wholly biased take on the eight best scenes in the franchise’s history:
CAR SKYDIVING
Furious 7 (2015)
Furious 7 includes a 22-minute scene that starts with cars parachuting out of a plane, landing and then embarking on an actionpacked chase sequence. It all ends with Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner jumping off the side of a bus just before it goes falling off a cliff.
The best part of all? The stunt was completely real.
Ten cars were dropped out of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules plane — two Chargers, two Subarus, two Challengers, two Jeeps and two Camaros — with the action captured by a mix of skydivers, helicopters and GoPro cameras.
Director James Wan filmed the scene in Arizona, Colorado and Atlanta, and the cars were dropped from varying altitudes.
Second-unit director-stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos talked to Variety about the decision to do the stunt for real instead of using CGI.
“Some filmmakers think the audience wants things manipulated — with a lot of fake stuff in your face. And it’s easy for filmmakers to say, ‘We’ll fix it later.’ But ‘later’ is fake. That isn’t what the audience wants. We said, ‘Let’s do it real. That’s the only way it will feel right.’ The producers and Universal were great — they trusted us. It’s high-end action, but it’s real. Even the bus going off a cliff, with a guy running on it — that was done real. He had to time his running and he had one shot to do it right. But it turned out great.”
‘CARS DON’T FLY!’
Furious 7 (2015)
The double-skyscraper jump with Brian and Dom and a soupedup Lykan HyperSport car did involve CGI, but it’s also the one stunt that Lee Loveridge, a professor of physics at Washington’s Pierce College, says could happen.
“To be honest,” Loveridge told Vulture, “that is probably the most plausible stunt in the whole movie.”
If you don’t remember, the car jumps from one Abu Dhabi skyscraper to another and — when the brakes fail — the Lykan makes a jaw-dropping leap to a third tower.
Loveridge says to make any of these landings, “the shocks would have to be extremely stiff to avoid bottoming out.”
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
SAVING LETTY
Fast and the Furious 6 (2013)
This stunning sequence involves one highway, double bridges, dozens of cars, a tank (yes, a tank) and a gravity-defying mid-air catch.
Dom launches himself out of his car and soars through the air to grab Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) before she flies off the bridge. The lovers land safely on the hood of a car. The only damage? A cracked windshield.
DAYLIGHT DRAG RACE
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
The original movie is tame by comparison, but watching Dom vs. Brian race (along with the cheesy slo-mo beefcake shots) set the stage for the characters’ 14-year bromance. It’s a keeper.
CAR MEETS BOAT
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
Brian and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) showed that boats have nothing on a Camaro as they made the jump from land to sea (on a moving yacht, no less) in this Vin-less sequel.
BANK VAULT HEIST
Fast Five (2011)
A bank vault gets dragged around the streets of Rio de Janeiro by a couple of Dodge Chargers like a water skier on a lake. This is one of the series’ best stunts, but physicist Dr. Randall Kelley told Vulture it would take 467 cars to replicate this in real life. Still, the filmmakers and stunt team did drag around a replica instead of using CGI. “I’ve been doing this 33 years, and I’ve never been as proud of a sequence. I think that’s the best thing I’ve probably ever done in my career,” stunt co-ordinator Jack Gill told EW in 2011.
TRAIN RESCUE
Fast Five (2011)
After barrelling his Corvette out of a moving train, Dom races to rescue Brian, who is clinging to the side of a burning wreck embedded in another freight car. Brian sticks the jump (naturally) and the two dive into a river after they narrowly miss an explosive collision with the bridge.
OIL TANKER ESCAPE
Fast & Furious (2009)
As Letty clings to the back of an oil tanker, Dom reverses his Buick alongside to save her. The stunt could have ended with Letty back in the car, but the flaming rig comes loose and starts tumbling toward them.
What does Dom do? He times it perfectly and glides his car safely underneath the wreck.
Even the bus going off a cliff, with a guy running on it — that was done real. He had to time his running and he had one shot to do it right.