On The Town: Fate of the Furious

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On The Town with Lonnie Adams

Do you ever see a franchise and think to yourself, ‘Man, I think it’s about time you guys stopped making sequels and did something completely new?’

Fate of the Furious, also dubbed ‘Fast 8’ by people to notate it’s eighth position in the franchise, may raise some of those questions with people. At what point does it stop being individual movies and become a mega-series. It is a concept that permeates other forms of media and entertainment as well. People can get bored with rehashes and the same old characters doing the same crazy things in cars every movie. So, dig a little deeper and the question you might find yourself asking is, “Is Fate of the Furious the same old thing, or is it something new and exciting?”

Fate of the Furious - Fast 8We join Dominic “Dom” Toretto in Cuba doing crazy things with cars as he races a very much older and slower car against the fastest car on the island. His antics not only achieve something among the people but turn favor of one of its bigger bosses. This sets up the thought of the whole movie as Dom is in Cuba with his cousin. He talks about his family, as he has done in all previous seven movies, as not just the blood relations but all those he holds close and dear to him. In fact, he only gets caught up in racing the junker because of his cousin.

It’s not long before Dom’s crew gets called in by Mr. Nobody for another job. However, this job seems to go well right up to the point that Dom betrays his family and goes rogue. Leaving his entire crew asking, what could make Dominic Toretto betray his family?

The movie kicks off inside the first five minutes with its usual high-octane action and crazy car stunts creating a great attention grabber to open the movie. With only small breaks in between the action intensifies to boiling points several times. Most movies have a high climax of action towards the end that marks the “final battle” or the “ultimate struggle.” Basically, the true highlight of the movie. This movie tries to fit two or three real climax points into it to stair step you to the final huge point.

After all, we watch action movies for the thrills and the fights, right? It’s the genre stereotype and Fate of the Furious takes its stereotype very seriously.

Beyond the action scenes, you find a little bit of herald to the old Dominic Toretto that was alluded to in the very first “The Fast and the Furious” movie. As Brian went undercover to find if this guy was capable of beating a man to death with a pipe-wrench. As you find out in that movie, he did attack the guy with a pipe wrench because he caused the accident that killed Dom’s father. Are we seeing the Family theme here yet?

That Dom comes back as he is now minus his “family” and crew, he seems to unwind in certain parts and you see the “lion,” as he refers to himself,  come out.

This sort of toss back lets you see a little of the old Dom without actually making a prequel movie, which in turn also helps fight off a little staleness from the movie.

But how can a movie with Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, and Vin Diesel be stale? It sounds more like a movie set to overdose its viewers on adrenaline. Well, that’s where the “eight” comes in. A lot of this is somewhat old hat. Two movies ago, we saw a member of the crew-family go rogue as Letty had amnesia after an accident. I love movie-tropes and how easily characters get amnesia these days. We’ve been over-the-top with this series that it becomes overly-expected.

There is one fun piece involving Johnson’s character Hobbs and a prison escape, perhaps my favorite scene in the movie. Still, every time you go to a Fast and Furious Franchise movie, you are ultimately asking yourself, how do they top the mega-stunt from the last movie?

Even the comedy from the movie is repeated as everyone jumps on character Roman and most of the comedy comes at his expense. Most of it. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I do want to give you hope for a particular scene towards the end involving an unaware innocent, a brutal Jason Statham, and headphones. Yeah, enjoy that.

So, obviously there is two scenes I just mentioned that still show life for this franchise that seems to have forgone a foot and laid a concrete bag on the accelerator. The constant push for more excitement, intense situations, and car stunts leaves a lot of the scenes somewhat fantasy-like. But, again, you’re already expecting that from this movie.

One nice bit of freshness comes with antagonist and hacker extraordinaire, Cipher, played by Charlize Theron. Counterpointing Ramsey in the hacker department, Cipher exposes herself as a mastermind behind a few issues the crew has faced before. The newer techno-villain adds a nice flavor as well as a springboard for a few of the over-the-top scenes we’ve discussed. Theron does a good job playing the character so easy to hate, but I hit a few moments where I felt a lack of conviction, or maybe just emotion, from her. It’s as if she was trying too hard for the stone-faced heartless villain, which may have been okay if Toretto wasn’t doing the same thing in front of his old crew.

So, let’s ask that question again, “Is Fate of the Furious the same old thing, or is it something new and exciting?” While I haven’t seen a major innovation since the franchise dropped the street races and started doing crazy life things like heists and warfare with cars, I can’t rule this film out saying it is old and tired. Yeah, you know what you’re getting before you get it, but a few key scenes and a desire to see the chaos-in-cars once more led me to really enjoy this movie and will likely drive me to see the rumored two sequels “9” and “10.” I can’t say it is the best action movie I’ve seen in awhile, I can’t even say it’s one of the best of the franchise. But I can say resoundingly that it is worth your money to go see it at East Towne Cinemas this weekend.

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