[Review] ‘The Fate Of The Furious’

The Fast and Furious franchise didn’t ask to have Paul Walker written out of things by tragic real-life events, but since the narrative that ensued had his Brian and Jordana Brewster’s Mia leave adventure behind to start a normal family, The Fate of the Furious rolls with that theme. Yes, the franchise has been emphasizing “family” as a keyword for several films now, but Fate really starts to look at the different forms that can take. What happens when an actual family of one’s own starts to move you away from the metaphorical family of bros (and, um, sisses?) you spend every other year crashing cars with?

It’d be tempting to call this subtext, if the movie didn’t feel the need to turn the word “family” into a drinking game just so you get it. Dom (Vin Diesel) starts thinking about kids with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) after an opening race sequence ends with him being embraced by a bunch of them; elsewhere, Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is proudly coaching his daughter’s soccer team, leading them in a Polynesian haka to scare the hell out of their hapless opponents. And previous villain Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) still has issues as far his brother Owen’s prior defeat goes. Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) are a long way from starting a family, but both have romantic designs on the newest team member, Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), which mainly take a backseat to Roman complaining about being disrespected by the rest of the team.

Because apparently the team needs a blank-eyed, generic white dude in the group, Scott Eastwood also comes aboard, as “Little Nobody,” the rookie protegee of Kurt Russell’s “Mr. Nobody.” And while there have been heists and duels before, the stakes this time around are James Bond-level, as in our villain, Charlize Theron’s Cipher, wants to launch Russian nuclear missiles (it’s never specified precisely why, except that it will vaguely help her get something she wants). To do this, she blackmails Dom with a piece of evidence we don’t see until much later, forcing him to turn on his friends, or “family” if you prefer. Because naturally, the best guy in the world to steal nuclear secrets for you is a street racer who’s honeymooning in Cuba. The world’s greatest hacker could have saved a lot of time by blackmailing the Russian ambassador directly, but that would not have led to awesome car chases. Yes, there are more personal reasons too, but no need to spoil them here, except to say a true mastermind might have been better off operating more objectively.

To catch Dom, Mr. Nobody brings Deckard aboard and forces him to team with Hobbs, and despite a whole lot of posturing and WWE-level promo-cutting, Deckard integrates into the team surprisingly well given that he flat-out murdered one of their best friends a couple movies ago. (Then again, death is rarely permanent in this series, as other events will prove.)

New-to-franchise director F. Gary Gray mostly maintains a look we’ve come to expect: the car chases are kinetic and exciting, while the out-of-vehicle action sequences are chopped and edited to hell, though not as horribly as the Johnson/Diesel fight in Fast Five. You’ll need a quick eye, but most of the hand-to-hand battles are just about comprehensible–I did find myself wishing for Zack Snyder’s slow-down/speed-up technique during a Hobbs/Deckard prison break, but it was fun nonetheless, mostly because Johnson is in full Schwarzenegger-in-Commando mode here. Like a little kid’s caricatured idea of what a guy with big muscles can be, he is basically He-Man in his power level, and by the way, that is casting I would like to see if Masters of the Universe ever actually gets rebooted.

That sense of absurdity carries over to the action, which in some cases relies on the audiences not knowing how an EMP actually works. Plausible or not, however, a centerpiece sequence that involves Cipher hacking every single car in New York that has an onboard computer is precisely the sort of thing we go to these movies for. Longtime fans will be rewarded with easter eggs that casual fans might not notice but for the cheering sections at certain Fate screenings.

If, indeed, the exit strategy is to show a larger family being broken up into smaller families, and it certainly seems to be–let’s just say Helen Mirren’s cameo hints at a potential spin-off on that score–I’m not crazy about taking two more films to get there. Yes, the Chow Yun-Fat-inspired shootout that involves a principal character holding a baby while dodging attacks is fun, but I really don’t want every major player to start having a toddler in tow from here on. Yet that is how real families roll: larger groups beget smaller ones, and while some find happiness in new units, others get left on the outside looking in. So far, the audience at least is still in.