Fate of the Furious: An all-out adrenaline ride

The Fate of the Furious is an all-out adrenaline ride that you’re sure to enjoy if you’re a fan of the franchise. Perhaps not as well-scripted as the previous two films, F8 falls back on fail-safes like exciting car chases, and spectacular stunts that manage to stay within the laws of physics. If you’ve watched the trailer of the film, the one question probably on your mind is what it took for Dominic Toretto to turn on his crew, his family, as he’s been reminding us for the most part of the last seven films. Halfway through, you get your answer, and while it’s not as satisfying as I’d have liked, it’s sufficient enough for a movie of this franchise.

The movie opens in Cuba, where Dom (Vin Diesel) and Lettie are vacationing. There’s an impressive car race that has Dom driving a beat-up jalopy. In true Fast and Furious fashion, there are twists, turns, and saboteurs, but Dom trumps at the end. What’s fascinating is when the jalopy’s engine catches fire, you’d think the race is over, but Dom casually turns the car around so the fumes blow away from his face and he wins it by driving backwards. This sequence, in a way, is symbolic of how the movie itself runs.

After Dom is cajoled into running high-profile heists for an extremely good-looking Charlize Theron, who plays cyber-terrorist Cipher, there are a series of face-offs between the team and Dom. As each car-chase and gun-fight get closer to Dom being captured, he does what he does best. What I like about this series of will-they-catch-the-Dom sequences is that the emotional quotient, which could have made things exceptionally sappy, are kept to a minimum. There’s very little talking, which is a real blessing considering some of the lines in the film, including “If I have to ask you to move again, it’ll be to your corpse.”

Charlize Theron does a great job cold, manipulative hacker. It’s a pity that her overall mission feels like they picked them out of three random Bond movies: Procuring the Nuclear Russian sub, nuclear codes from the Defence Minster and the EMP laser cannon. F8 is also accentuated by moments of great mirth between the steroid-laced bromance of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Jason Statham, and of course, the constant quips by Roman Pearce, who’s been a franchise regular since the second movie.

I go into every Fast and Furious movie wondering if this is the film in which they will finally run out of crazy ideas. But no, The Fate of the Furious, with self-driven cars that career around New York, and sportscars that blaze across the Russian ice cap, is not that film.