I must confess, I have only drawn excellent mileage from one film in The Fast and the Furious franchise, yet I’ve seen all of them. Why, you may ask? Well, I suppose watching these films is a little like pining for fried chicken from a certain internationally renowned franchise, where you inexplicably crave it, consume it, and then regret it after the stomach pains set in.

But I digress.

Until now, the best and arguably only good film in the franchise was Fast Five (2011) where the series revolutionised itself from the simple underground racing genre to bombastic action coupled with international intrigue. The secret was in the control. The action was ridiculous, but not too ridiculous, and the storytelling was cohesive enough to keep things grounded. The two subsequent instalments, while better than the first four, took the action and narrative in a direction too preposterous to swallow.

Thankfully, The Fate of the Furious finds some of the balance that made Fast Five so good. In fact, I’d say this eighth film is the second best in the franchise, which is probably like finishing runner-up in a spelling bee where every other contestant is a dimwit. But Fast & Furious 8 is certainly a fun time as long as you can check your brain in at the door. Heck, it even has the sophisticated Hellen Mirren cuss like a sailor in a small role, which is worth the ticket price alone.

This isn’t to say that The Fate of the Furious is a completely smooth ride. It is clear that the screenwriters had to start with fast cars and work backwards, leaving some of the narrative feeling more than a bit contrived. For example, is it really the best idea to send a bunch of carjackers to prevent the hijacking of a nuclear sub? So many of the problems presented could have been resolved by calling the authorities instead.

There are other issues as well. The crux of the tale is that Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) has turned on his team because cyber terrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron) is blackmailing him. In the second act, she ups the ante in a gut-wrenching scene for Dom. But in the context of the franchise, you realise this convenient twist was just so that Dom’s relationship with his wife Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) remains smooth while also allowing the couple to manage a surprise.  

The selling point of the movie is its high-octane action fuelled by excellent special effects

A lot of innocent people also die in the film. We see that the team has no qualms about killing foreign soldiers who are just as much a victim of Cipher as them. Particularly distasteful is when a Russian sailor finds himself thrown on to the giant spinning fans of the sub in a gruesome death that leaves Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) amused, and in my eyes, also a murderer.

Of course, the selling point is the high-octane action. Fuelled by excellent special effects, The Fate of the Furious doesn’t disappoint here thanks to the spectacular choreography where the vehicular action quickly crescendos into top gear and doesn’t let up. Unlike, say Michael Bay’s latest Transformers films, these sequences aren’t pure noise, and there is a certain creativity involved. In spite of my misgivings, I enjoyed the admittedly ludicrous set-piece where our heroes are chased by the nuclear sub.

Perhaps my favourite bit didn’t feature cars at all. Without giving too much away, it involved the rescue of an adorable giggling baby with Jason Statham (Deckard Shaw) at his best, mixing wry humour and entertaining gunplay. These scenes were surprisingly funny, and I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. 

As long as the filmmakers can continue to surprise us, I wouldn’t be confounded if there are another eight films in the franchise, though I am guessing the names of these films will grow more absurd than the action.

Rated PG-13 for violence, destruction, suggestive content and language

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 23rd, 2017