Insight:
The Fate of the Furious begins in Cuba, where Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon. Dom, here, meets Cipher, a cyber-terrorist who has the leverage to make him work for her. Hobbs asks Dom to gather his team for a mission to recover a stolen EMP. Dom betrays the team, crashes Hobb’s car and takes the EMP. The team cannot believe Dom’s actions, but sense something wrong behind the whole incident. Mr Nobody gathers the team and brings Hobbs and Deckard Shaw to work together in order to find Dom. The chase takes them through New York City and finally to Russia, where they tackle a nuclear-submarine. What leverage has Cipher on Dom? To what extent will Dom betray his family?
Buzz:
The Fate of the Furious is the eighth movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise. This shall be the first time that a female antagonist in the form of Charlize Theron shall be seen in this franchise. It is also the first Hollywood movie to have been shot in Cuba. The director, F. Gary Gray is known for his movies like The Italian Job, Law Abiding Citizen and Straight Outta Compton. A large portion of the movie has been set in New York city. Dwayne Johnson had posted a message on Instagram expressing anger, hinted at Vin Diesel over the latter cancelling some of Johnson’s planned scenes and for arriving six hours late to the shoot.
What To Anticipate:
The Fast and the Furious franchise began with the strict idea of cars, street races and family, but it somehow has delved into a monster-action flick with demi-gods thwarting off torpedoes with their bare hands and dodging a nuclear missile with more explosions, more exotic locations, more bullets, even a nuclear submarine and the silent godly act of saving the world in the whole process. With every new movie in the franchise, they somehow pulled away from the original idea, one little touch at a time and it is with great disappointment that we need to tell you that the latest in the franchise is nothing more than a GI Joe-marries-Marvel Superheroes layered with some really eye-candy cars.
The Fate of the Furious doesn’t take any time to build the characters, for it doesn’t need any. And when it does, all the hate towards Deckard Shaw, the main antagonist in the last movie, melts away over a couple of corny dialogues. The acting’s totally un-needed. Scott Eastwood’s introduction to the franchise, as in like a replacement to Paul Walker, seemed totally unnecessary and Tyrese Gibson’s placement as the comic relief, daftly pushed. Also, when exactly did Ludacris’ Tej became a cyber-genius from a laidback street race organizer? Dom says, “It doesn’t matter what’s under the hood. It matters who’s behind the wheel” or rephrased better, ‘It doesn’t matter the crappy story, just put gravity and logic-defying action-sequences.. it’s a hit franchise and we will make tons of money’.
The plot of the story runs so fast that it leaves you dumbfounded, with less of it happening around cars and their customization and bonding over street races, but more about Toretto, the demi-god doing everything wrong in order to save his family. Charlize Theron’s inclusion to the franchise as the cyber-terrorist was a smart move and she does portray that coldness in her character, but that too remains unjustified, with her seeing little or no action and only commanding others with a few cheeky dialogues. And the fact that she easily believes Dom shooting Shaw makes her stupid, because even the audience knew that was pretend-play.
The only thing that made a little bit of winning impact is one of the fight sequences in the plane with Jason Statham and the baby. Even Helen Mirren’s cameo appearance as the mother of Shaw brothers doesn’t quite add up. And not for the sake of it, but we all wished some remembrance of Paul Walker but all we get is one last scene at the end, like every other movie in the franchise.
TRAILER:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh2rGxRMTYg