The Great of the Furious
After eight films and nearly two decades, I have finally figured out how to watch the movies in the Fast and Furious franchise. It requires a complete and utter suspension of disbelief or understanding of physics. The world in which these films take place may look and sound much like our own, but there is no gravity and there are no rules.
And damn, if that doesn’t make them just about the most fun movies ever. Are they perfect – no. And that’s not including the obvious issues with the cars and what they’re capable of sustaining at high speeds – or no speeds, when they inevitably crash into the wall. But, with the recent release of The Fate of the Furious, they are finally, completely, unapologetic.
There is a reason people watch police procedurals or read romance or mystery novels. We like knowing what we’re getting ourselves into, how a story is going to end, and some of the signposts we’re going to see along the way.
The Fate of the Furious delivers all that in spades.
Dom Toretto, played, of course, by Vin Diesel, has to grapple with sacrifices made in the name of family – be it family by blood or brotherhood. Yet again, we have characters who played villains in earlier storylines being the only man capable of the job, and joining forces with the ragtag crew of drivers, hackers, military personnel and just about anyone else they can pick up off the street.
The Fate of the Furious takes ensemble cast to an unimaginable level. At least in Ocean’s Thirteen we knew what we were getting into. To name just the most important cast members in this latest Fast film: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky, and Scott Eastwood – these are the good guys, with a nice cameo from Helen Mirren and Luke Evans.
And that’s why this film was the best. It’s just so extra, so much Fast and Furious that it’s almost like it went into the series and came out with a fist full of soviet submarine chases, villains with secret headquarters on luxury airplanes, and car chases around Manhattan where every autonomous vehicle in a two-mile radius comes to life remotely and boxes in some foreign diplomat’s limo.
Fate of the Furious is not pretending. It’s not hiding behind some convoluted storyline with amnesia and undercover cops and family family family. In fact, the plot of this film is probably the simplest of all eight, and that’s for the better – keep it clear why we’re blowing up government compounds, driving backwards in flaming hot rods and dodging remotely-operated cars diving free of tenth floor parking garages. This movie has more tanks, more machismo, and more insane supercars than ever before. You want torpedoes? You want Rally Fighters? You want The Rock pulling a cement desk literally off a prison wall? You want Charlize Theron playing the scariest damned villain you’ll ever see? You wanna go to the movies.
Because I think, after eight films and nearly two decades, The Fast and Furious movies finally decided what they really wanted to be – escapist, fantastical, totally insane action films, that just happen to use the coolest cars on the market. They’ve failed the reality test a long time ago and now they’re planting a lead foot on the production gas and going full throttle towards the closest wall – and chances are, the crash is going to be spectacular. Fate of the Furious sure as hell was.