The Fate of the Furious

“THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS” is thrilling but expectedly soulless!

Filled with adrenaline spiking over-the-top action sequences, this eighth instalment is bigger in scale than ever before, but still as witless and incoherent as its predecessors. As long as you’re interested in seeing a slew of car chases, drag races, noisy blasts and airplane brawls, you’ll be entertained. But if you’re not, these 136 minutes will seem mind-numbingly long. Watch it only if you’re a fan!

Now that Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon and Brian and Mia have retired from the game and the rest of the crew has been exonerated, the globetrotting team has found a semblance of a normal life. But when a mysterious woman (Oscar winner Charlize Theron) seduces Dom into the world of crime, he can’t seem to escape and starts a trail of betrayal of those closest to him. From the shores of Cuba and the streets of New York City to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea, this elite team will crisscross the globe to stop an anarchist from unleashing chaos on the worlds stage and to bring home the man who made them a family.

The previous instalment in the franchise, 2015’s Fast & Furious 7, was one of the fastest movies to reach $1 billion worldwide in box-office history and the sixth-biggest global title of all time. For Fast & Furious 8, the series welcomes two Oscar winners – Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren alongwith newcomer Scott Eastwood. But that does not entail infusion of any sense in the script. It still remains stupid for the most part. And just because the audience for stupid is reliable and vast, this franchise lives on and prospers. You feel the movie takes place in a fictional world where the laws of biology and physics don't apply, but the tenets of friendship and family do.

Director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Yes, the film is much bigger in its look, feel, scale and even the cast, but there’s very little that is enriching as a result. It plays it to the gallery and does it with panache. You know what you're getting before you go, and the film is shameless about it. The VFX is top notch, the fact that is especially highlighted in the scene where Cipher (Theron) hacks the computers in all the vehicles in New York and also in the climax where a fleet of cars get chased across a frozen lake by a Russian submarine. All these visuals are fun till they last and obviously never enriching. The performances are adequate across and matter-of-course require not much effort on anyone’s part. Even Charlize Theron seems to be there only to extend her repertoire.

In all, “THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS” delivers all the knockout stunts the fans expect, even if the series is drifting into incongruous plots. As advised before, watch it only if you’re a fan.