Crowded cast and fast cars
FAST & FURIOUS 8 Running Time: 2 hrs 16 mins Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Kurt Russell, Charlize Theron Director: F Gary Gray
AFTER his surprisingly fun remake of The Italian Job in 2003, F Gary Gray would seem to have been a no-brainer to direct a Fast and Furious instalment.
But careers make left turns, and it took the success of Straight Outta Compton to get Gray in, well, the driver’s seat of this eighth instalment of the stupendously successful cars and-guns action franchise. The result isn’t as big a gear-shift as some fans expected. In fact, it recycles plott wisting devices from earlier chapters and keeps action firmly in the street hoods-save-the-world neighbourhood entered a couple of years ago.
After being forced to rejigger the last picture mid-production when Paul Walker died, the film-makers let him rest in peace here. With due respect to the actor, it isn’t as if the Furious franchise is hurting for dramatis personae: when Dwayne Johnson came aboard in the fifth film, things started to feel crowded. Then came Jason Statham, then Kurt Russell, and now a villain played by Charlize Theron. Somebody get Bruce Willis on the horn, and we’ll have ourselves a proper movie for Episode 9.
Theron carries plenty of weight in the story; she appears, however, to have little fun doing it. Her supervillain, a genius hacker known as Cipher, sneaks up on Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto in the middle of his Cuban honeymoon with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and assures him he is about to go to work for her. Soon Dom is “going rogue”, stealing a very powerful EMP device from his buddies and delivering it to Cipher. Though scenes between Dom and Cipher give him ample opportunity to register his anger at being forced into her service, when he crosses paths with his old friends, Dom says nothing and keeps his big jaw clenched, appearing to have flipped loyalties overnight.
Yes, Furious scribe Chris Morgan used this device just two movies ago, when Letty returned from the dead as an amnesiac doing the bidding of some other villain. But let’s forgive the self-plagiarism, because pushing Dom to the bad-guy side for a while briefly solves the Furious saga’s biggest storytelling difficulty: convincing us there is a universe in which Diesel is more fun to watch than Johnson.
Relieved of this burden, viewers will happily go along with any other baloney churned up in Morgan’s thick-witted script. Sure: that EMP can wipe out all the electronics on a fortified military base without disrupting the video display sitting right beside it. Why not: the driver of a car who needs to communicate with supposed foes in other cars can just shout and have his instructions understood dozens of yards away, over the noise of zillion-horsepower engines and oncoming missiles.
There are no stunts here to top the last film’s skyscraper-to-skyscraper jumps, and it must be said that some feats have come to feel rote.
For a long time, it seems that the movie’s wittiest moment will be a blink-and-miss-it gag involving a car’s rear-view camera warning system. Then, towards the end, comes an extended sequence involving extreme violence, an innocent bystander and an unexpectedly considerate brute. For a few minutes, Fate of the Furious might be funny even for someone who has never cracked a smile at one of Diesel’s self-satisfied line readings. It seems unwise to count on more such moments in future instalments. – The Hollywood Reporter