THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS

Since 2011’s Fast Five, the Fast and the Furious Franchise has become,
unarguably, the must-see and most looked-forward to summer blockbuster movie
franchise in the action movie genre.

Whilst the first 4 installments in the Franchise earned it a sizable fan base and
following especially amongst street racing and super cars enthusiasts, it is 2011’s
Fast Five that shot it into overdrive and earned the Franchise its enviable status as
a guaranteed summer box office blockbuster.

The 8th iteration of the Franchise, The Fate of the Furious, made a record-breaking
opening weekend haul of $539.9million making it the “biggest global opening in
cinematic history”. Like a souped-up super car high on octane, it took it barely
two weeks to cross the billion dollar marker in the box office race tracks.

The Fate of the Furious (F8) opens in Cuba with a franchise-favourite appetizer; a
street car race so high on predictable saccharine, you could practically fuel the
race cars with it.

Fresh from his win at the race and still savouring honeymoon bliss on the streets
of Havana, Dominic Toretto encounters a damsel-seemingly-in- distress in Charlize
Theron’s blond-haired cyber-terrorist villain, Cipher.

Next up, our improbable team of former street racers turned black-ops specialists
are in Berlin to steal an EMP (Electronic Magnetic Pulse) device. As is to be
expected, they pull it off but whilst making their get-away, Toretto double crosses
the Team and goes rogue after stealing the EMP device. He meets up with Cipher
who has got some kind of blackmailing hold on him from their earlier encounter
in Havana.

The ground works having been laid, F8 revs up its high octane engine to take the
audience on a dizzying and thrilling ride that is as high on the spectacular as it is
on the improbable and downright implausible.
Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs, captured after the Toretto double cross, finds
himself in prison where he encounters Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw. The
encounter expectedly results in a contrived exchange of schoolboy playground
boasts made even more hilarious by Statham’s cockney accent. An even more
contrived prison break sequence results in a spectacular over-the-top fight
sequence with slow-mo effects thrown in to up the testosterone ante.

With Toretto gone rogue and teamed up with Cipher to steal nuclear codes from
the visiting Russian Ambassador in New York, our improbable Team finds itself
entering into an even more improbable alliance with its former nemesis,
Statham’s Deckard Shaw.

Even by the Franchise’s patented level of improbable and implausible stunts, the
showdown in New York took it several notches above over-the-top and downright
ridiculous but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable.

Over-the-top car chase sequences have been a staple of the Franchise and each
installment tries to up the ante.

In F8, they pulled out all the stops to make it rain super cars literally in New York.
The scene where the team tried to corner Toretto like a bunch of matadors trying
to rein in a rampaging bull pushed the boundaries of plausibility to levels matched
only by the degree of suspense of belief required to enjoy action movies.

Almost as if they realized they needed to temper implausibility with nostalgia,

they introduced the flashback story-telling device and the humorous and ever-
arguing duo; Tego Leo and Rico Santos, last seen in 2011’s Fast Five.

But even that could not excuse the implausibility of how Toretto’s random street
race opponent in the opening scene in Cuba managed to make it to New York just
in time to assist him in out-smarting Cipher.

Since 2013’s Fast & Furious 6, our team of Street Racers have inexplicably
assumed James Bond-esque Black-Ops capabilities that see them cavorting to
exotic locations around the world undertaking covert government operations.
In F8, the car chase sequences on ice in Russia where Toretto attempts to hijack a
nuclear submarine seized by separatists almost mirrored the car chase sequences
on ice in Die Another Day.

The final scenes in Russia provided some of the most over-the-top sequences in
F8 that just beggared belief and overcompensated for the lack of a plausible and
coherent storyline.

As enjoyable as the action and stunt sequences were, one couldn’t ignore the
gaping holes of implausibility in the movie.

How and when exactly did an untrained band of street racers suddenly become
such Black-Ops specialists that they always seem to outwit and outfight seasoned
professionals? How exactly do the timelines between the events of 2013’s Fast &
Furious 6, 2015’s Furious 7 and 2017’s Fate of the Furious fit to make plausible
the subject of Cipher’s blackmail against Toretto? Knowing how their interference
had foiled her earlier plans in Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, why didn’t Cipher
just kill the Team when she stormed their base to steal God’s Eyes and had
demobilized them with a concussion bomb? How come the EMP device when
deployed by Toretto in the nuclear Submarine base in Russia fries up every
electronic system except the one in Toretto’s car? How come the Team so easily
accepted Statham knowing he killed Han in Fast & Furious 6?

Performance-wise; the stand out was Jason Statham. He played his inimitable
lean and mean fighting machine shtick flawlessly. He elevated to genuine laugh-
inducing levels contrived and almost puerile brag lines by delivering them in that
intense stiff upper-lipped cockney accent that compliments his bad-ass persona.

As Luke Hobbs, Dwayne Johnson, thankfully, had more screen time in this
installment than in the last one. Since 2011’s Fast Five, he has proven himself as
the co-star of the Franchise (along with Vin Diesel). However, in his verbal
sparring with Statham, his delivery seemed lacking in the intensity that made him
such a stand out in Fast Five, and came across as more gimmicky.

Vin Diesel’s rogue turn as Dominic Toretto required that he deploy as much range
as he could muster to capture the emotional and moral dilemma posed by the
situation. To achieve this, he fell back on his trademark gravelly baritone and one-
dimensional menacing look.

Franchise regulars, Michelle Rodriguez, Chris Bridges and Tyrese Gibson, stayed
comfortably within their supporting roles with Gibson drawing predictable but
nonetheless humorous laughs with his deftly-delivered lines.

As main villain Cipher, Charlize Theron showed promises of delivering a

memorable villain in the mould of her Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Her dready blond tress coupled with the soft but villainous cadence of her voice
held promises that sadly failed to achieve lift off largely on account of her lack of
physical engagement in the movie’s several action and stunt sequences. This
coupled with the incoherent logic behind her motive just detracted from her
character.

In an unbilled cameo appearance as Magdalene Shaw, Helen Mirren was a

pleasant surprise that thankfully did not go quite as overboard as the movie’s
action and stunt sequences.

F8’s success at the box office has guaranteed a lifeline for 2 more sequels in the
Franchise. However, seeing as the Franchise has seemingly conquered all terrains
on terra firma, the only terrain left for it to explore in advancing the Franchise is
space.

With all the improbable and implausible storyline and stunt sequence stretches
we have had to endure (albeit enjoyably) from the Franchise, there is literally
space enough (pun intended) to rev up that souped-up engine, engage the gears
and aim fast and furiously for the stars.