No Surrender Cinema: The Fate of the Furious
You have to give credit where credit is due; The Fast and the Furious franchise has the staying power that other film series would kill for. What started as something inspired by the real life street racing scene has evolved into films that feature shadowy government operatives, international terrorists, and heists that rival The Italian Job. We’ve come along way from the fenced goods of the first movie, where Dominic Toretto and his crew spent their free time stealing from truckers and engaging in a turf war. Just how far? See for yourself in this month’s edition of No Surrender Cinema! Buckle up and settle in for a look at the most recent installment of the series, 2017’s The Fate of the Furious.
A word of warning for those of you reading who have not seen this film yet. Much like many of the cars we’ve seen in these flicks, this review contains spoilers. If that doesn’t bother you, then read on!
Fate (or F8, if you’re one of the kool kidz who enjoys funky spelling and abbreviations) picks up soon after Furious 7. After defeating Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) in the last film, everyone seems to be settled into normalcy. Luke Hobbs (The Rock) has gone from government agent to soccer mom, coaching his daughter’s team. Dominic Toretto has married his longtime lover Letty, and the two have taken off to Cuba for their honeymoon. It’s there that Dom has an encounter with a mysterious stranger (Charlize Theron), who is about to have a profound impact on his life and the lives of his friends. First and foremost, since no good action hero can stay away from the job for long, Hobbs is approached about getting the band back together for one of those “off the books” government assignments. Before you know it, Hobbs, Dom, and Letty are reunited with Tej, Roman, and the crews “rookie”, Ramsey, in Berlin. The gang successfully steals the EMP device that they were asked to get, but during the getaway Dominic turns heel by running Hobbs off the road and taking the EMP. No one can believe that Dom would turn his back on family, since he’s always preached how important loyalty is, but they’re quickly faced with the fact that one of their own, their own leader, has betrayed them.
The next time we see Dom, he’s in the company of the same woman he randomly met in Cuba. As it turns out, the meeting was not random, and this is not just another pretty face. Her name is Cipher, and she’s a cyberterrorist who’s looking to obtain some nuclear weaponry to start a war. Hobbs takes responsibility for the loss of the EMP, and is conveniently being sent to the same high security prison that Deckard was locked in at the end of the last film. Before his incarceration, Hobbs is confronted by the mysterious operative Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and his new subordinate, dubbed “Little Nobody”, but Hobbs refuses any help and chooses to do his time like an honorable man. Before you know it, that honorable man is involved in a prison riot, engaging Shaw once again before the two escape together; all part of Mr. Nobody’s plan. It turns out that Owen Shaw (the villain of Fast & Furious 6), Deckard’s brother, had been working with Cipher, so Deckard is now considered an asset to the team, despite having tried to kill them not all that long ago. I mean, if I’m in a fight against top level ciminals, I’m going to want Jason Statham backing me up, but the level of forgiveness here would make priests roll their eyes. I guess Deckard said enough Hail Mary’s while he was stuck in his cell.
Now that we know why Deckard’s allegiance has shifted, we get to the heart of why Dom is doing what he’s doing. Cipher is holding Dom’s former lover Elena hostage, as well as Elena’s son, who is Dom’s son that he was previously unaware of. Dom is clearly conflicted over his actions, but promises Cipher he’ll do her bidding as long as no harm comes to Elena or their child. On his next mission for Cipher, he steals a nuclear football and guns Deckard down (I guess he missed the memo), but refuses to allow Cipher’s goon Rhodes to kill Letty. That show of weakness causes Elena to not only be killed, but Cipher has her main henchman Rhodes do it right in front of Dom. With Cipher’s plans coming to fruition and Dom’s blood boiling, not to mention the crew having mapped out their counterattack, Fate delivers an extended action sequence that would be right at home in a Mission: Impossible movie. Our heroes are racing across the Russian tundra to stop a nuclear submarine, dodging heat seeking missiles, and get some extra help from yet another unexpected source.
In all honesty, I found The Fate of the Furious to be lacking something. Maybe it was the loss of Paul Walker, maybe it was the attempts at being a little “extra” clever with characters switching sides, maybe it was the need to always “one up” the previous entry. It was enjoyable, but I felt it was the weakest entry since 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Still, this franchise deserves a lot of credit for continuing on. I’ve been a fan since Day One (literally, as I saw the first entry on opening night), but when Tokyo Drift rolled around I was expecting the series to either die off or lend its branding to direct to DVD crap the way National Lampoon’s and American Pie had done. The way the series has evolved and reformatted the timeline fascinates me, and I can’t think of anything aside from the Saw series that has captivated me that way in recent years. We’ve gone from street racing to speeding across an icy Russian landscape, from hijacking trucks full of VCR’s to black ops missions involving nukes. Diesel’s cameo at the end of Tokyo Drift would have been a fitting “ribbon” to wrap up the story of our antihero street racers as a trilogy, but instead we were treated to the original cast reuniting, A-list action stars like The Rock and Statham joining the fray, and the ensemble looking more and more like GI Joe than Jersey Shore with every new installment.
Losing Walker’s Brian character definitely took some of the charm away, and that’s something that can’t be replaced by Statham’s badass persona. It would be foolish to create a copycat character (something I don’t think they intended to do in the first place), and they made the right call by “retiring” Brian after Walker’s death. Still, the naive cop who was sucked into living on the edge with Dom and co. was often the most exciting character to watch, because his internal conflicts helped to drive the story forward. Fate delivered plenty of excitement, and several of the twists were genuinely surprising, but there were also times where it felt like producers weren’t sure where the story should go after Walker’s untimely death. This could also wind up being a redux of Tokyo Drift, a movie that I was hard on initially despite my love for the first two films, but meant more in the long run and later viewings became more enjoyable with the new knowledge of its place in the F&F timeline.
The Fate of the Furious can be found anywhere from Amazon to Wal-Mart, and currently airs in rotation on HBO’s schedule. If you’re not a devout fan of the series you may enjoy it more for being a soft reset of the storyline, while the hardcore followers may or may not agree with my assessment here. With two more sequels in the works, as well as a spinoff featuring The Rock and Statham’s characters, there is definitely a lot more to look forward to. It will be interesting to see, once the engines have cooled down and the dust settles on the franchise, just where The Fate of the Furious ranks among the rest of the series.
