Fast & Furious 8

The Fast and Furious franchise returns with the 8th installment “Fate of the Furious”. This time, the loyalty of the Fast family is called into question when its leader, Dom, is blackmailed into working with a cyberterrorist, Cipher, who threatens to tear the family apart.

For a franchise that so heavily stresses on the importance of family, the filmmakers for sure took a risk here by pitting the family leader against the rest of his clan. Without Dom at the helm, the rest of the family have to rely not only on their skill sets but above all, each other, to outmanoeuvre and bring home their rogue leader. While this risk is conceptually intriguing, its execution is too cautious to live up to the franchise’s name. The dynamic between the characters are surprisingly downplayed. This is a missed opportunity, especially when you have such a diverse cast of characters at your disposal. One simply cannot get enough of their quick-witted banter.

Nonetheless, Fate of the Furious definitely delivers on its promise of melodrama, over-the-top action and signature car chase sequences. The Fast franchise is certainly one of the rare film properties which has developed a sense of self-awareness over the years, conscious of its own style and flaws. The ridiculousness of the Fast and Furious films is beyond the measure of real life physics but when you are watching hundreds of driverless cars raining from the sky, you could feel that the film is having fun, unapologetically.

(Originally posted on 14 Apr 2017 @projectunwrapped)