5. The Fate of the Furious
Clear from the devastating production of Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious feels for better and worse a franchise palate cleanser; an attempt to reset the table without Paul Walker and compensate for his absence with a growing supporting cast.
F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job, Straight Outta Compton) may have seemed like a less-inspired directorial choice on paper, but he does a solid job falling in line with the series’ house style, even if bringing little of his own filmmaking personality to the table.
If lacking the gonzo energy of Justin Lin or James Wan’s prior work, the action is still a joyous hoot, inching the series ever further from its roots and ever closer to being a glorified Mission: Impossible movie, albeit with a greater deference towards wacky, CGI-driven set-pieces.
The strongest action sequence arrives early and with no car in sight, as Hobbs and Shaw stage a thrillingly energetic jailbreak and are inserted into the Family. Elsewhere there’s inspired commentary on our tech-infused present through Cipher’s car-hacking tech, a wonderfully silly scene where the Family tries to harpoon Dom’s car in place, and that video game-y final battle against a damn submarine of all things.
As enthralling as the action is, though, the script is aggressively stupid in ways that don’t always endear or cohere. The series’ requisite melodrama has never felt more like a telenovela, what with Dom turning “evil” – which is actually a pretty ingenious way to keep the feuding Diesel and Johnson apart for most of the movie – and the revelation that he unknowingly fathered a baby with Elena (Elsa Pataky). A baby who, in the series’ single-most deflating scene, ends up being named Brian rather than Paul.
It honestly would’ve made more sense to just have Mia (Brewster) and Brian’s kids kidnapped, because this reveal both shoehorns awkwardness into the Dom-Letty dynamic while necessitating the fairly mean-spirited death of Elena simply to tidy things up. Perhaps it’s worth it, though, for getting to see the Shaw brothers rescue said baby from Cipher’s plane in a rare, brilliantly unhinged flex of black comedy for the series.
The invocation of the word “family” is very much in full self-parody mode by this point, what with Deckard Shaw joining the team amid only minimal protest over his “murder” of Han. Though there are clear attempts to soften Shaw’s character – including pitting him opposite Dwayne Johnson for much of the movie – not even the most charming banter between himself and The Rock can quite make fans forget what he did.
The new casting additions are meanwhile a mixed bag; Charlize Theron is a perfect get for this series and clearly up for driving some fast cars, but she’s confined to a plane for most of the movie and isn’t written to have much in the way of a personality. Game of Thrones star Kristofer Hivju meanwhile gets depressingly little to do as Cipher’s lackey Connor, and Helen Mirren’s wonderful casting as Mama Shaw is a bust given that she doesn’t even drive anything.
It is a good deal messier than the three films that preceded it, and you can sense the beginnings of so-called “franchise fatigue” beginning to creep in, but it still smartly bets its chips on more right things than wrong.
If overcrowded by nonsensical soap opera plotting, The Fate of the Furious delivers where it matters most; dementedly creative, full-throttle action and thoroughly entertaining character banter.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
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Originally published July 3, 2021. Updated July 19, 2021.
