My biggest problem with this film is that I'm sitting here writing about it instead of watching it again. The Fate of the Furious honestly provided the most fun cinema-going experience I've ever had, except for perhaps Interstellar. Maybe.
The Fate of the Furious naturally picks up where the insanely successful Furious 7 left off, with Dominic Toretto and his wife Letty honeymooning in Havana.
After an unbelievable (literally) streetrace, a world famous hacker called Cipher (Charlize Theron) shows up and blackmails Toretto into working with her to basically achieve world domination.
Toretto seemingly goes rogue, and it's up to his team from the previous movies (played by The Rock, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris and Jason Statham to name a few) to stop him. That's pretty much all you need to know.
This movie was extremely well made, seriously. No other film could show me a Lamborghini racing across frozen water somewhere in Russia to avoid an attack submarine armed with nuclear weapons and be met with total acceptance and engagement on my part. No matter how unrealistic and over the top some of the scenes were, they felt totally normal and reasonable to me as I watched.
It wouldn't be a true Fast and Furious film without ticking a few vital boxes. I'll run through some of them that were delivered as expected in The Fate of the Furious:
- The slapstick comedic stylings of Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce
- Vin Diesel wearing multiple different sleeveless garments
- Extremely advanced computer hacking by Ludacris as Tej Parker, who seriously stepped his skills up somewhere between being a mechanic in 2 Fast 2 Furious and now
- Dominic Toretto driving a black American muscle car
- Millions of dollars worth of vehicles being briefly driven, wrecked, and thrown away like used napkins.
I will admit that yes, the dialogue and plot were cookie-cutter and predictable. The movie played out like a parody of itself. The characters have gained impossible advancements in hand-to-hand combat, hacking, shooting and driving skills since their days as street racers in the first film. While this is all true, I loved every second of it.
Gone are the days of the mild-mannered car flicks, where the biggest scandal was an undercover cop penetrating the underground to lock up illegal street racers. Now we are dealing with international threats, secret government organisations and nukes.
A lot of people use the crazy escalation of the Fast and Furious films to discredit the franchise, but I disagree. Never before have films in a series outdone each other successfully with each and every instalment, while staying so popular and relevant. I for one hope to see this series run until the wheels fall off.
The Fate of the Furious is exciting, hilarious, and extremely satisfying. It is impossible to not enjoy yourself while watching this film. It has been out almost a week, so if you haven't seen it already then I question your priorities.
