Furious fate:
The series’ eighth instalment starts its engines with promise, but takes a wrong turn, Peter Howell says,
The Fate of the Furious
★★ (out of 4) Starring Vin Diesel, Charlize Theron, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Chris (Ludacris) Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Kurt Russell, Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren. Directed by F. Gary Gray. Opens Friday at major theatres. 136 minutes. PG
“Jumping the shark” jokes already fly over the scene in The Fate of the Furious wherein Vin Diesel uses his muscle car to leap over a marauding nuclear submarine.
Fair enough, except this isn’t the most preposterous incident in this eighth instalment of the highly profitable wheels ’n’ squeals franchise, which noisily commences the 2017 summer-blockbuster season. More mirthful moments arise when Charlize Theron sends “zombie” cars spilling into NYC streets, or when Dwayne Johnson redirects a speeding torpedo with his foot. And leave us not forget previous Fast & Furious inanities, whereby cars jumped out of airplanes and across skyscrapers.
The fact remains that this franchise has been vaulting sea predators for years — or running on fumes, to employ a more appropriate metaphor. Previous instalment Furious 7, bidding farewell to tragically departed series-mainstay Paul Walker, ran with the tag line “One Last Ride.” Where do you go from there? Here’s the confused and clamorous answer from The Fate of the Furious: Everywhere and nowhere. With Straight Outta Compton’s F. Gary Gray at the helm, Diesel’s glowering gearhead Dom Toretto “goes rogue” across the globe, with his mystified “family” in hot pursuit, as he falls under the villainous command of Theron’s cyberterrorist Cipher, whose motivations mystify.
She wants to start the Third World War using stolen nuclear codes, with Dom as her stooge. Seems she’s furious about U.S. and Russia warmongers, or maybe just at the hairdresser who gave her such unfortunate cornrow braids.
The reason why Cipher can kick Dom around isn’t revealed until midway through the movie, and it’s one of the few things in returning scripter Chris Morgan’s screenplay that actually makes a lick of sense.
The Fate of the Furious, or F8 for short, opens promisingly with a return to the series’ street-racer roots. Dom is visiting relatives in Havana while honeymooning with new bride Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), whom it only took him forever to marry, when he manfully challenges a local thug to a “Cuban mile” race through the historic Cuban capital. The thug is driving Cuba’s hottest car (of course), Dom is in a decrepit, wacky racer that doubles as a bomb and the outcome is predictably stupid — and thrilling.
After this, however, the picture turns into bad 007, as a mostly immobile Theron takes charge and the action ridiculously shifts from the streets of New York City to the arctic ice of the Barents Sea.
Hail, hail, the gang’s all (mostly) here, trying to figure out what’s got into Dom: Dwayne Johnson as feder- al security agent Luke Hobbs; Jason Statham as black ops baddie Deckard Shaw, Chris (Ludacris) Bridges as ace gearhead Tej Parker; Kurt Russell as shady federal fixer Mr. Nobody; Nathalie Emmanuel as super hacker Ramsey and more.
A sure sign nobody really knows what to do next with a franchise is when they keep adding actors to it. Along with Theron, the new hires include Scott Eastwood as the serious sidekick to Mr. Nobody and Helen Mirren as a player to be named later who don’t take no guff from nobody. It must be said, though, that Eastwood and Mirren boost the levity quotient of a series that has gotten far too serious even as it has grown ever more ridiculous.
And they’re not done yet, not by a long shot.
I predict they’ll be eventually leaving skid marks on the moon, as long as their varooms are answered by box-office ka-chings.