[rating=4.00]
It feels pointless to describe any entry in the Fast and Furious franchise as “insipid,” but here we are, another year and another insipid entry into an insipid franchise. Not that it matters. One of the more fascinating aspects of this series—maybe the only fascinating aspect—is how critic proof it seems to be. The snobbish elite of cinema can whine and wail all we want, but that won’t stop fans around the world from flooring it directly to billion dollar earnings, ensuring we’ll continue spinning our wheels indefinitely, wondering how low and ridiculous this series can get.
This entry, the eighth, with the groan inducing title The Fate of the Furious (hashtag F8), gets pretty low and wildly ridiculous. I suspect that won’t matter, not to the millions of people who’ve stuck with the franchise, even after Tokyo Drift (or, hell, even after the original movie). No, by now, the producers and stars have a pretty good idea of what their fans hope for and expect; low and ridiculous, in this context, should be seen as synonymous with bread and butter, and I’m sure they’ll eat it up.
Whatever else I might say about the franchise, I’ll admit that they’re fun. Fast cars and explosions are second only to math in terms of universal languages, and it’s a language this series has always spoken fluently. As the series has gone on, of course, it’s spoken it louder and with considerably more bombast, eventually evolving from a series about street racing into a sort of latter-day James Bond, which I gather is part of the appeal. Now, I have to wonder if they haven’t gone too fast and too furious for their own good.
What else is there to question now that we’re racing submarines across a frozen sea in Siberia? Or when we’ve reached a point where a hacker (Charlize Theron) takes remote control of an army of cars to create a sort of zombie horde of driverless automobiles through New York City? It’s absurd and ridiculous, pushing the limits of credulity beyond where they’ve been pushed before even by its predecessors.
I can’t imagine that’ll matter to the core fans—whose numbers are considerable, against all odds—who’ve driven the series to this point. They appear to be all in, and god bless you if that’s your thing. I don’t judge. For those fans, I’m sure there’ll be cheers and whoops as cars drift across the varying terrains, or as old series favorites like Jason Statham and Kurt Russell are reintroduced. You’ll gasp and wonder as Vin Diesel appears to turn against his family, going bad in the service of Theron’s Cipher (ugh) and her nefarious hacktivist plans (ugh).
Neither the cheers nor gasps ever feel wholly deserved, steeped as it all is in predictability. Questions aren’t allowed to linger long enough to create any sense of wonder, and even if they were you’d almost instinctually understand that things were never as they seemed, and any modicum of thought would unravel the details long before the movie itself reveals them. The moments of glory come and go too fast to allow for any real feeling of reward, assaulting the audience to the point of numbness with hyper-stimulation until up, down, left, and right lose any sense of meaning whatsoever.
Taken in small doses, the action set pieces are admittedly fun. Director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) proves himself capable of handling the quick-edited and explosive absurdity of it all, and as ridiculous as it all is as it unfolds, fans of the series will most likely be pleased enough by what is presented here.
Theron, as ever, manages to spin gold out from tripe, playing Cipher with a calculated coldness—at one point she Bad Guy Monologues about being the predator at the water hole, adding weight to Cipher’s dead-eyed, reptilian glaze. She’s a welcome addition to the cast but, then again, she usually is. Our esteemed alumni, meanwhile, know what’s wanted and expected of them, and they deliver in kind, and I’ve no doubt that fans will be pleased by their offerings here.
I don’t get it though, and I doubt I ever will. Not that it matters. This is a series you’re either entirely with or entirely against. You know where you land on that spectrum, and that’s where you’ll be on this outing. Never mind how ridiculous and inane it all is. Never mind the skull shattering insipidity. You know what you’re getting walking in, and The Fate of the Furious delivers exactly that. I’ll leave it to you to know whether that’s good or bad.
The Fate of the Furious is now playing in theaters everywhere.
