Review: ‘Fate of the Furious’: Toretto on ice with explosions

It’s a shame that Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters ended more than a year ago. They would have had a field day with the Fast and the Furious’ eighth installment—The Fate of the Furious. Already known for its increasingly illogical plots from film to film, Fate ups the ante by serving up insanity after insanity. This time, Dom (Vin Diesel) and the gang outrun a submarine!

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Then again, we don’t watch the franchise for Nolan-esque masterpieces of storytelling. We watch for the adrenaline-fueled car chases, insane action, scantily-clad women, and more sappy family drama. Fate fulfills the checklist of any true Fast and Furious film. Except this time, it seems to have left its plot at the door.

Of any recent Furious film, Fate starts off with the most promising opening sequence. It harkens back to the first-ever Furious film with a street race in Cuba, one of the first film sequences shot in that country. It’s classic Dominic Toretto saving the day for his family (this time, his cousin). But very, very quickly, Fate realizes that it’s not a car film anymore. Dom doesn’t race with the Impala he owns. He races with an improvised bucket of bolts. Of course, he wins (and survives!) the race by disintegrating his ride into (quite literally) a blazing fireball.

The insanity doesn’t stop there, however. As we’ve now seen in the trailers, Dom is coerced by Cipher (Charlize Theron) into going rogue against la familia. If it sounds familiar, it’s because the family vs. family trope has been a mainstay of the Furious franchise. We’ve had Dom vs. Bryan and Dom vs. Letty stories before. The stakes get even higher when the pillar of la familia himself turns against the entire gang. While the conflict is more intense, it lacks the emotion that previous films had.

For what it’s worth, the reason for Dom’s betrayal is at least fleshed out adequately early on. And it introduces the meatier part of Fate’s plot—Dom vs. Cipher. Charlize Theron’s performance as Cipher was astounding. She was someone you absolutely should hate. I should emphasize that this was because of Theron’s performance, not the writing. From a narrative perspective, there was no credible reason why she’s the big baddie. Fate settles for the tired trope of: “she’s a cyber terrorist, therefore she’s automatically bad! Grr!” Through her heavily romanticized hacking skills, she has access to literally everything that has a computer in it. Why exactly did she need to steal a submarine from Russia again?

Now, a Furious film won’t be complete without Dom’s gang. They’re still around, but they’re hopelessly lost without Dom in more ways than one. Without Dom, the crew just jumps from action scene to action scene without the heart and intellect that he delivers. Like Cipher’s motives, how the crew moves from scene to scene is magically explained by fanciful hacking hocus pocus instigated by Tej (Ludacris) and the returning Ramsey (Natalie Emmanuel). The most interesting draw from the crew’s side of the story is the wise-cracking rivalry between macho men Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham).

The film conveniently ends in an open-ended fashion, letting loose the certainty of a few sequels (as if Vin Diesel’s announcement of at least two more sequels wasn’t good enough). If I may even hazard a wide-eyed guess, Furious is priming itself for a reboot with Scott Eastwood training to be the next Paul Walker and Natalie Emmanuel returning as the next femme fatale.

Still, without much glue to hold it together as a narrative plot, most of what Fate has going for it is its carnage-filled visuals that would make even Michael Bay proud. Cars hacked and dogpiling all over New York City. Cars chased by torpedo-slinging submarines. Jason Statham engaging in a gunfight with a baby in his arms. Fate’s action is dizzyingly mind-numbing. The key to enjoying Fate is going with the flow and keeping your foot of the brake pedal.