The Fate of the Furious (2017)
There's a moment in The Fate of the Furious where a nuclear submarine bursts through Arctic ice and chases a convoy of cars across a frozen sea. I sat there watching it and didn't feel excitement. I felt tired. That's not the reaction F. Gary Gray was going for, I suspect, but it's the honest one. When a franchise has spent over a decade escalating its action to increasingly ludicrous heights, the point eventually arrives where "ludicrous" stops reading as fun and starts reading as desperate.
The setup is straightforward enough: Dom Toretto goes rogue, seemingly betraying his beloved "family," and his crew has to hunt him down while also somehow preventing a cyber-terrorist from triggering a global catastrophe. It's a premise that could have worked. Watching the gang turn on their own leader carries genuine dramatic potential. But the film squanders it almost immediately, burying any emotional stakes under layers of convoluted plotting and action sequences that mistake scale for spectacle. The "family" dynamic, which once gave this franchise its unlikely heart, is reduced here to a series of anguished faces and motivational speeches that land with a thud.
The set pieces are exactly what you'd expect: loud, flashy, and utterly divorced from physics, logic, or consequence. The submarine chase is less a thrill ride than an accidental parody of everything the series has become. And yet, perversely, the film's strangest sequence is also its best. Jason Statham doing a full gun-fu routine while simultaneously protecting a baby in a carrier aboard a plane is so gloriously unhinged that it briefly jolts the film back to life. It's the kind of thing that makes you laugh and shake your head at the same time, a genuine "how did they greenlight this?" moment. But it's also symptomatic of the film's biggest problem: tonal whiplash so severe it gives you narrative whiplash. One scene is played for broad comedy, the next is demanding you invest in geopolitical stakes that feel completely weightless.
The cast do what they can. Dwayne Johnson remains enormously watchable, Kurt Russell is reliably dry, and Charlize Theron commits fully to her villain role. But even this collection of charismatic people can't manufacture genuine tension in a story that has made it abundantly clear that nobody faces real consequences. When plot armour is this thick, peril becomes meaningless. You're not watching to find out what happens. You're watching to see what ridiculous thing happens next, and even that novelty wears off fast.
Pacing is where F8 really loses me. At over two hours, it's a slog. The exposition is relentless, the action beats grow repetitive, and the character moments never land because there isn't enough breathing room for anyone to feel like an actual person rather than a function of the plot. Gray directed Straight Outta Compton, a film with real rhythm and genuine emotional texture, so I know he's capable of better. Here, though, he seems constrained by a franchise machine that has its own momentum and isn't particularly interested in being steered.
I'll always have a soft spot for where this series started. The Fast and the Furious was a scrappy, genuinely enjoyable bit of nonsense with charm to spare. That film knew what it was and embraced it without pretension. The Fate of the Furious wants to be enormous without doing the work to earn the enormity. It's a franchise that long since stopped asking "why?" and settled comfortably for "why not?", and you can feel the creative exhaustion in every overcrowded frame.
For die-hard fans, there's just about enough spectacle to carry you through. For everyone else, it's an exercise in diminishing returns. Loud, occasionally fun in a completely mindless way, and almost entirely forgettable the moment the credits roll. Two stars.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2026-05-24
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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