It's a good thing that screenwriter Chris Morgan's salary isn't based on how expertly he assembles plots.
Morgan is well compensated because he continues to think of delightfully implausible ways to race and wreck a variety of motor vehicles. By placing white knuckle car chases on the streets of Havana, downtown Manhattan or in places where there are no streets at all, he keeps a series that is now in its eighth installment from grinding to a halt.
Fate of the Furious
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Cast: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Kurt Russell, Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren
Director: F. Gary Gray
Rating: PG-13, for prolonged sequences of violence and destruction, suggestive content, and language
Running time: 2 hours, 16 minutes
This time Morgan is teamed with F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) who did impossible things with speedboats in Venice and Mini Coopers in subway tunnels in The Italian Job remake. Nonetheless, he made all of it look quite real. For the most part, the pairing is ideal because the two realize they aren't making a low key heist film. Subtlety is a vice in this series, and these guys aren't going to give us any.
What there is of a story involves the team's de facto leader, Dominic Torreto (Vin Diesel), taking on a mission in Berlin with the rest of his team that involves a device that generates an electromagnetic pulse so powerful, it can kill the power grid in just about any major city.
The movie would stop 15 minutes in if, yet again, Dominic and his team triumph over fellow racers. This time, Dominic, who utters platitudes about family and teamwork when he doesn't have his foot glued to the accelerator, betrays the rest of his cohorts.
It's not by choice. An elusive hacker known only as Cipher (Charlize Theron) has compromising information about Dominic and is forcing him to help her acquire a variety of unconventional weapons. It's easy to wonder how you can blackmail a guy who is already wanted by law enforcement agencies across the globe, but she has clearly hit him where he lives.
A pair of equally mysterious operatives named Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) arrange for Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) to track down their former boss. Because Dominic may be moving up to nukes and drives away with his contraband very quickly, they may be the only ones who can catch him before he damages more than other cars.
The Nobodies hedge their bets by adding former British soldier Deckard (Jason Statham), who gave the team relentless misery in their last adventure. That's because he and Hobbs have come the closest to capturing Dominic in the past and because his assistance is as essential as it is unwanted.
Making Deckard even more valuable is that Cipher has betrayed him, ensuring that he'll willingly team up with old enemies to get back at her.
As with the past few assignments, the team traverses the globe finding odd ways to get fast cars into missions that could be done on foot and how to get explosions to occur at times they normally wouldn't.
To Morgan's credit, he can write a lot of snappy banter among Deckard and Hobbs and Roman and Tej. Listening to these guys taunt each other is a good way to get through the gaps between chases and crashes. At times one wishes that Morgan didn't have to bother including Dominic because he's frankly the least interesting member of the team.
While the rest of the cast seem to enjoy playing their roles tongue in cheek, Diesel is still playing a criminal with a moral code of his own. All of that brooding seems out of place with all of the outlandish spectacle. It's more fun to hear Roman and Tej complain and one up each other than it is to see Dominic ruminate.
MovieStyle on 04/14/2017