The Fate of the Furious

A little over a year ago I reviewed Furious 7 to coincide with the theatrical release of the spinoff film, Hobbes & Shaw. On a quick side note Hobbes & Shaw was a surprisingly bad detour for the series that I would rank right at the bottom with 2 Fast 2 Furious as the only two subpar entries from the franchise. It is safe to say I do no plan on reviewing it here. What I am reviewing today is the latest core entry in The Fast and the Furious brand in 2017’s The Fate of the Furious (trailer). Fast & Furious 9 was supposed to hit theaters earlier this summer, but the pandemic and current closure of a majority of theaters prompted Universal to push it back to April 2021. So while today’s entry will not have the honor of coinciding with the latest theatrical release like I did with my blog last year, it does have consolation prize of coinciding with the blink-and-miss-it release of the critically panned videogame, Fast and Furious: Crossroads, a couple weeks ago. I have yet to play the game, but I feel safe to say The Fate of the Furious is likely exponentially better than it.

Veteran director Gary Gray takes his first attempt at directing a F&F film and opens The Fate of the Furious off with Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) enjoying themselves in an extended honeymoon in Cuba before Vin’s cousin finds himself in trouble and Dom has to naturally race the local goon to settle the score. It is one of the best races of all the films where Dom tricks out his cousin’s lemon of a ride with a Cuban formula of NOS that propels Dom to push the car to its limits and have a thrilling finish which raises the ‘yeah, right’ factor of the F&F films to new heights, but in all the right ways.

Not all is peachy for Dom though because not long after that killer opening he meets this film’s antagonist, Cipher (Charlize Theron). Fate of the Furious quickly establishes that Cipher is no pushover villain as she forces Dom’s hand to turning on his team on a routine black ops mission in Germany where he steals an EMP for Cipher. From here the film shifts into how Cipher has her hooks into Dom and has him doing jobs for her across the globe to setup one ultimate heist in Russia to close off the film in a dazzling array of the eye-popping stunts and special effects the brand is known for.

Seeing how Dom’s team responds to his betrayal and try to stay on his toes is a fun game of cat and mouse. Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) returns to assemble the team on these unofficial black ops missions and has a new apprentice by his side going by Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood). Roman (Tyrese Gibson) has a fun friendly rivalry with Little Nobody throughout the film. This is probably the best performance Tyrese has put in throughout the series, with him disposing of several baddies with his signature flair in the last act especially standing out for him. Tej (Ludacris) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emanuel) return to display their hacking prowess. A quick line of dialogue addresses the Paul Walker dilemma by the gang respecting Brian and Mia’s choice to live their family life and not get them involved. Hobbes (The Rock) is as awesome as ever in his larger-than-life persona. One of the most entertaining scenes in the film is where Hobbes finds himself locked up with Furious 7’s villain, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). Watching the two go on a showcase prison break was a delight and a half to consume.

In a questionable twist, Hobbes ropes Shaw into working for the team to help bring down Cipher and Dom. Surprisingly the rest of the team has no problem welcoming Shaw into the team despite Shaw murdering their former beloved comrade, Han, in the Furious 7. I have a big problem with this since Shaw shows no remorse for his past and no one on the team confronts Shaw about Han’s assassination here. Shaw does play a big role in the final big Russia action scene to help assist the team, but it is quite the stretch to say it absolves him of murdering Han. Granted, there are a lot of suspend disbelief moments with any F&F film, but this is a glaring flaw that goes unaddressed in this film.

Speaking of ‘suspend disbelief’ moments, as far as the action and stunts in Fate of the Furious goes, I can safely assure that this film lives up to the high bar the series has established. There is a absurd scene involving an army of hacked smart cars that I was able to turn off my mind and roll with. Same goes for a military grade tank and submarine chase on the Russian ice. Gary Gray pulls out all the stops in that final act at the Russian base and the final half hour will fly by before you know it. I remember coming off my initial theatrical viewing of this thinking that Cipher’s ruthlessness seemed too forced and put on, but I came around on her in my second viewing. Her constant bullying over Dom to keep him doing her bidding throughout and being presented as the mastermind of all hackers makes Cipher reside in the top tier of villains for the films. It ultimately all comes together for another outstanding film for the franchise.

Like most past F&F BluRays and DVDs, there is a hearty amount of extra features on this BluRay. Gary Gray offers up a solo commentary track which offers up plenty of production facts and insight. Highlights include his love for the opening Cuban race, relating his past chemistry working with The Rock on Be Cool paying off dividends here, pulling off the ostensibly impossible feat of closing off Time’s Square and how Gray slyly snuck in a reference to his past work on Friday that went right over my head. There is a little over an hour worth of additional bonus material on here. They are split up into many smaller features, and of those I would recommend checking out Zombie Cars, Malecon Stunt Race, Streets of New York and Iceland Stunt Drops the most as they all do a masterful job at breaking down the stunt work and the logistics that made these ambitious scenes possible. I re-watched all the previous films along with a commentary track from the crew at Giant Bomb, but all their commentary tracks were planned in time to build up to the theatrical release of this film so instead of a commentary track they released a spoiler-cast analyzing the whole film and ranking all the films at the end. I re-listened to it last night and they do a thorough job dissecting their highs and lows with it. Click or press here to give it a listen.

The Fate of the Furious held up much better than I originally thought. Thinking back on it, a part of me likely felt awkward how to take in a F&F film without Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster undoubtedly played a role in my initial mixed take on the eighth film. It also helped that I came around on Charlize Theron’s performance on my second viewing too. Aside from my reservations with Deckard Shaw being fully welcomed into ‘the family’ by the end of the film, I had a riot with The Fate of the Furious and it continues the roll of outstanding entries in the series since the fifth film. Here is hoping the ninth film does not suffer any more delays and that it will hit theaters this April!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Avengers: Infinity War
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed I & II
Deck the Halls
Detroit Rock City
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Grunt: The Wrestling Movie
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Hell Comes to Frogtown
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
I Like to Hurt People
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Last Action Hero
Major League
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Man vs Snake
Marine 3-6
Merry Friggin Christmas
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Not for Resale
Pulp Fiction
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VIII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Scott Pilgrim vs the World
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Slacker
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Sully
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
The Wizard
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Days of Future Past