RECENT WATCHES: The Fate of the Furious (2017)

Since the characters became millionaires at the end of “Fast Five,” there's really been no narrative reason for the “Fast & Furious” franchise to roll on. Not that anyone is making these movies for the art, at this point. “Furious 7” made it into the billion dollar club, completely insuring that we'd be getting more of these ridiculous spectacles. F. Gary Gray, right off the success of “Straight Outta Compton,” was recruited to steer yet another entry in this turbo-charged series. The amusingly entitled "The Fate of the Furious" would roar into theaters in April of 2017. It would be another massive hit, also grossing over a billion dollars at the international box office. Depending on who you ask though, this is when the wheels start to fall off the “Fast” machine.

While on their second honeymoon in Havana with Letty, Dom is approached by a mysterious woman known only as Cipher. Meanwhile, Luke Hobbs recruits the rest of the gang to capture a EMP device from an extremist faction in Europe. That's when Dom appears, turns on his make-shift family, and steals the EMP. Mr. Nobody pulls the familiar players together to figure out what has happened and defeat Cipher. Hobbs ends up in jail with Shaw, the two eventually busting out together and joining the mission. Nobody knows the reason Dom is working for Cipher: She has the son he didn't know existed and is blackmailing him to be part of her terrorist plot to take over the world.

As has often been joked about and referenced, “family” has emerged as the uniting theme of the latter-day “Fast” movies. Having Dom switch sides, seemingly betraying his family (but actually out of further obligation to them), pushes that idea further. It's also the exact kind of comic book style plotting I've come to expect from this increasingly far-fetched universe. However, there's a problem with inserting such a standard “What if the good guy switches side?” set-up. Without the fatherly figure of Dom Toretto to head this familia, things begin to feel a bit aimless. Forcing Vin Diesel back into the stoic tough guy mode he started in robs him of his charm. He seems so checked-out through large parts of this movie, one scene further removing his humanity by placing him in bulky armor and a mask, like a car-driving Jason Voorhees or Iron Man. Turning Dom into a traitor sullies the hang-out movie vibes that propels this series.

That story turn also represents another clear phenomenon: Writer Chris Morgan starting to run out of ideas. Plot ranks somewhere around the level of catering in importance to these films. However, there's no denying that the story is a mess. The exact nature of the world-endangering MacGuffin seems to change from scene-to-scene sometimes. It's obviously nothing more than a plot device to get the crew from one set piece to the next. The finale takes place in a Siberian submarine port overtaken by some other occupying forces, one example of the kind of plot points that come at the audiences nearly as fast as the cars do. Dom asking a favor of a mysterious new character or the sudden appearances of jet packs are other examples. The vehicular mayhem has always led the rest of the plot around in these movies. The action scenes driving the story, instead of the other way around, starts to feel like a problem.

Balancing out such a large cast continues to be an issue too. The subplots involving Dom's child, Hobbs, or the Shaws sometimes feel like another movie interceding on this one. There are other new characters thrown in too. The least inspired of which is charisma void Scott Eastwood as Mr. Nobody's sidekick. The best of which is Charlize Theron as Cipher, the seductive villain. Like everything else, she's a ridiculous character. The kind of pseudo-profound dialogue Theron has to rattle off – such as a strangled metaphor about watering holes and crocodiles – is truly baffling. Yet Theron is a pro, bringing a sinister curl of her lips to each absurd line, making an otherwise generic villain – also revealed to be the Author of All Dom's Pain, another bad cliché of modern blockbuster writing – way more appealing than she'd otherwise be.

Despite the tangled mess of a screenplay and a number of questionable narrative choices, “The Fate of the Furious” still works when centering its hyper-macho cast of goofy bros. I'm not talking about Tyrese's Rome, who becomes more annoying and inessential with every film, or Michelle Rodriguez' Letty, dragged along by the plot. Instead, the cock-measuring contest between Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs and Jason Statham's Shaw is definitely the highlight of the film. The constant trash-talking between these two, which immediately escalates to homoerotic tension and then mutual respect, is highly amusing. That's what you get when you paired two physical titans with gallons of charm against each other. That unexpected cameo also proves that letting extremely charming performers bounce off each other is the real strength of these films.

That brings me to the action sequences. There are definitely some good moments. Rodriguez gets a good one-on-one fight with a goon, that ends in a nicely grisly way. Statham and Johnson's escape from cyber-jail features their respective fighting styles – brute force and parkour – contrasting nicely. Statham is at the center of the film's other best moment, where he has to kill lots of creeps while protecting a baby. 

The movie actually peaks early as far as its vehicular stunts go. The opening street race, where Dom pushes a jalopy way past its limit, is by far the best car moment in the film. Later scenes, such as when Cipher's super-hacking turns every thing with wheels into a weapon, feel a bit desperate. This franchise falling to its need to make cars the currency of every action scene. (Dom managing to kill a submarine with a muscle car is the normal level of desperate for this series.) The extremely long climax, and the unending vehicular mayhem it involves, started to bore me quickly. Explosions and twisted metal aren't enough sometimes. 

You don't see much of F. Gary Gray's personal style in this one. A rare dutch angle or some smooth cinematography for a few seconds is about all you get. Otherwise, macho melees, CGI chaos, and lots of pyrotechnics characterizes this installment. Even when those moments are effectively done, “The Fate of the Furious” feels a bit self-conscious about its desire to always top itself and earlier entries. That's led to a scrambled script and repetitive action that too often puts the best elements in the backseat. [6/10]