Released: April 2017
Director: F. Gary Grey
Rated PG-13
Run Time: 133 Minutes
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Genre: Action
Cast:
Vin Diesel: Dom
Jason Statham: Deckard
Dwayne Johnson: Hobbs
Michelle Rodriguez: Letty
Tyrese Gibson: Roman
Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges: Tej
Charlize Theron: Cipher
Kurt Russell: Mr. Nobody
Scott Eastwood: Little Nobody
Nathalie Emmanuel: Ramsey
Luke Evans: Owen
You know, for everything that I say about sequels and re-makes, I still go and see them holding out hope that they’ll be at least half-way decent. I’ve seen the good, bad, and the horrendous when it comes to sequels. I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it again and again: A sequel has to do more than just deliver more of the same. Not only do you have to give people what they HAVE seen, but you have to add more to it. You have to spruce it up by exploring the world a little bit more. The Transformers movies don’t add anything new to the formula. The last several movies in that franchise have been indistinguishable from one another. I gave The Last Knight a 7/10, but the fact is, I don’t think I need to see anymore movies in that series until they actually try and deliver a compelling film. Sequels have a hard enough time trying to do more than the original film, but Michael Bay just doesn’t seem to understand that bigger and louder isn’t always better. Transformers stopped being remotely decent with the first movie. That’s not to say that these big and loud sequels are all bad. They’re not. Michael Bay just has a one-track mind. The Fast and the Furious franchise is one of those franchises that I really like, because they know what they are and they run with it.
The Fate of the Furious picks up a short time after the events of Furious 7. Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon in Cuba, when Dom is approached by a mysterious blond-haired woman. Shortly after, Dom and his crew are called upon by Hobbs to help locate and retrieve an EMP weapon. During the escape, Dom deliberately causes Hobbs to crash and steals the weapon. After being sent to prison, Hobbs, along with Dom’s crew, is recruited by Mr. Nobody. It seems that Dom is in league with Cipher, the blond-haired woman who happens to be a cyber-terrorist. Not understanding why Dom would turn on them, Mr. Nobody also recruits Deckard Shaw, the villain from the previous film, to help. The overall story has never really been the focus of the Fast and Furious movies. They are just simply a way of getting from one action set-piece to another. Sometimes a good movie doesn’t necessarily need a good story to tell, but for that to work, the characters and action have to step up their game.
Thankfully, the characters of the Furious movies are what really propel the story and action forward. These characters are actually quite interesting and the actors portraying them are fantastic. Everybody here steps up their game. Scott Eastwood is a newcomer to the franchise, and he’s surprisingly not bad. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the son of the legendary Clint Eastwood. Tyrese Gibson is in fine form here as is Ludacris and Kurt Russell. These guys are awesome. Vin Diesel gets to flex his acting muscles a bit more in this film. I’m not going to spoil the story part of why he turns against his team, but it is an important part of the film. The guys that steal the show, however, are Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham as Hobbs and Deckard Shaw respectively. Everyone here has some kind of chemistry with one another and Jason and Dwayne really hit it off. They’re fun to watch. Statham is clearly having fun with his role. Helen Mirren makes a bit of a cameo appearance as the mother of Deckard and Owen Shaw. Pretty cool. The short end of the stick, though, is Charlize Theron as Cipher. Theron is a fantastic actress, but her performance is way too much like Vickers from Prometheus. She feels deliberately too much like a Bond villain. She doesn’t quite have the same menace that Deckard and Owen had. She brings the movie down a bit for me.
One of the things that has truly been very interesting over the past few Furious films, are the locations. We’ve seen these films take us to locations like South America, Europe and the Middle-East. One of the coolest aspects about Fate is that part of the film was really shot on location in Cuba. We get to see an exciting car race take place in Havana. We don’t see a lot of films shot in this little country and it’s a shame. It’s beautiful. The architecture, the cars, and the people really give the opening scenes a fantastic Latin flair. From there, the film takes us to New York and Iceland. This is quite literally a globe-trotting franchise. They go everywhere, and the amount of action that these countries allow Vin Diesel and company is very surprising. These are beautiful locations, and places that I would hope to visit one day.
If there’s one thing that most people can say about The Fast and the Furious movies, is that these films know how to escalate things. At first, I didn’t think the movies could get any crazier than Fast 5 or 6. Furious 7 took it up a notch or two beyond what I thought was bat-shit crazy. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you, The Fate of the Furious, the most bat-shit crazy action movie I’ve seen this year. It takes the action that we’ve seen in the previous films and dials it up to 20. The action in New York city was absolutely bonkers when Cipher literally takes control of over a thousand cars and causes all sorts of havoc, especially when she causes cars to fall out of buildings several stories up. That was INSANE! Well, that was nothing compared to the stuff that happens in Iceland. O. M. G. They really went all out on the action here. The craziest thing is, is that a lot of the action and stunts were done in camera. So what you see, is generally what you get. Yeah, there’s definitely CGI involved for sure, but a lot of what happens on the ground is done for real. The submarine itself, though, not as much, but that’s understandable. It’s absolutely crazy.
A lot of people have claimed that the Fast and Furious movies are no different than the Transformers movies. Bullshit. What separates the two franchises, giant robots notwithstanding, is that the film-makers of the Furious movies actually have made characters that we actually give a shit about. What has Michael Bay given us? A lot of action, but no character. Honestly, I cared more about what happens to Vin Diesel’s character than Mark Wahlburg’s, because we’ve had seven movies to get invested. Bay has no such pretense. He doesn’t actually give two shits about character development. While the Furious movies are really silly and come across as somewhat melodramatic at times, at least they attempt to make us care. Michael Bay stopped caring about his characters YEARS ago. That’s one of the reasons why I find myself not caring that much about Transformers these days. Yeah, Fast and Furious aren’t the smartest movies, but they’re not trying to be. They’ve embraced their insanity and the actors and director know it. That is actually far more compelling than anything that Michael Bay has given us in well over a decade. Sorry, folks, there is no comparison between Fast and Furious and Transformers. I like both, but when it comes to big-budget blockbusters, my money is on Fast and Furious.
My Recommendation: Definitely worth seeing. 9/10.