"Dominic Toretto has gone rogue."
Hello everyone!
Did I foreshadow my own Tuesday blog post back on Saturday? And did I, maybe, almost definitely, foreshadow it on Friday night when I posted on Instagram?
Why yes, yes I did.
See, here's the thing: I love the Fast and Furious franchise.
Sure, a lot of people complain that it's gone on FOREVER and it should end already. But then, a lot of people say the same thing about Supernatural, and look where that's got them. In plain facts: there are movies which will always make money, and this series with Vin Diesel at the helm is one of those.
Besides, it's already been announced that this current trilogy, eight, nine and ten, will be the last, bringing the whole number to ten movies which, collectively, have brought more money into the treasuries than a couple of other franchises combined.
So when one of my best friends suggested we go see The Fate of the Furious on Friday, just a day after the premiere, I was on board that train faster than you could say 'Ride or die'!
It would take too long for me to recap everything that's happened from the time the first movie rolled into cinemas all those years ago. Suffice to say, Vin Diesel's Dom and Paul Walker's Brian have pretty much set the standards for car racing and impossible stunts in the middle of nowhere or on exploding whatevers. In the process, they've hated one another, learned to work together, loved one another like family, their characters had kids, they lost some of their family members, they gained new ones, they were labelled criminals and then exonerated, and at the point of movie eight, Dom can finally have his honeymoon in Cuba!
Well, sort of, but I'll get to that in a minute.
Dom and Letty are enjoying some hard-earned down time after the gang took down Deckard Shaw in movie seven, but of course things aren't quite as easygoing as they seem to be, because Dom's cousin gets himself in trouble and is now facing his car being towed by the meanest asshat in Cuba, who rules the racing scene.
Of course, Dom can't have THAT kind of smear on his family lineage. So, he says he'll race the guy. Yeah, even in the beat-down car that looks like it wouldn't make it down the block.
But hey, this is Cuba! And Dom's behind the wheel, meaning he wins, earns the respect of the racers, and gives his own car to his cousin (after totalling and exploding the original car, obviously).
Things look swell until he runs into this blonde dread-locked woman who seems to be having issues with her car. Charlize Theron looks as gorgeous as ever as she subtly unveils she wants something from Dom, and doesn't actually threaten him that we can see it, but she tells him what he's going to do, of his own free will.
She also shows him something on her phone, but we don't know what it is yet.
In the meantime, Hobbs, who is busy teaching his daughter's soccer team the Haka, gets roped into taking an EMP out of Germany, but he needs to do it on his own, without government backing, so he calls the old team together to do what they do best, which is pretty much blow everything sky-high and get the hell out of Dodge, with the EMP tagging along (thank you, Roman, for your generous over-use of explosives).
Unfortunately, Dom decides this is the moment to go rogue, crashing Hobbs and taking the EMP, which Hobbs crushingly has to relate to the team right before the German police arrive to arrest him.
At this moment we're introduced to yet another newcomer to the series, Scott Eastwood's character Nobody Jr. (I doubt that's his name, but everyone called him that, so let's use it) who really has no clue who he's up against because The Rock calmly breaks his handcuffs after being subtly threatened, and would have probably smacked the kid into pieces against the wall if Kurt Russell didn't step in and calmed him down.
Oh, but Hobbs' fun is just beginning, because he gets stuffed into a cell right across from Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), and here begins the back-and-forth between the two men who would gladly tear each other apart, if given half the chance. Also, Hobbs would beat Shaw like a Cherokee drum, but that's beside the point.
Mr. Nobody springs the two of them from prison by initiating a prisoners vs prison guards fight, which allows us to see the two powerhouses at work: Statham as Shaw is as quick and decisive as a cheetah, but just as merciless, while Johnson as Hobbs is about as delicate as an elephant, and still gets the job done by pretty much mowing down anything and anyone in front of him.
Nobody has recruited Dom's old team, Hobbs and Shaw included, because he needs them to capture Cipher, aka, the dread lock lady who has Dom. And because she as Dom, he needs Dom's team to go up against him, after they finally realise their Alpha going rogue isn't just a nightmare.
Doesn't help they have to work with Shaw, either, but beggars can't be choosers, and Shaw is pretty much the only one on par with Dom since Brian is out of commission.
Meanwhile, we finally learn just what Cipher has over Dom: namely, she has Elena. If you recall, while Dom thought Letty was dead, he found some solace in Hobbs' old partner from the police force. They parted ways after Letty returned, but what Dom DIDN'T know, and the viewers learn right along with him, is that Elena was pregnant at the time and gave birth to a baby boy, Dom's son.
So, yeah, Cipher is playing with a caged tiger: Dom knows he can't make a move because of the boy, but he pretty much also tells her, politely, that he's good at waiting for his chance.
We jump to New York where Dom is set to steal some nuclear codes from the Russians, by a very scary tactic: Cipher has one of her guys crack every chip that's in any car on the NY streets, and the cars start driving themselves. It looks like a very fancy movie gimmick, but in THEORY it COULD work - and trying to imagine a world where someone did exactly dad makes me shudder in terror. Can we not repeat this any time soon, please?
Both Cipher and Dom have no clue where Dom's team is at, until, that is, he gets himself chained by the lot of them all around, something he rather cheerfully tells Cipher, too. But, since he successfully got the nuke codes, he needs to get out of there.
And there I am, sitting and waiting for Shaw and Dom to go at it again, until Dom pulls the trigger and Shaw drops dead, causing everyone to recalibrate: this is NOT the Dom they used to know.
However, luckily he isn't too far gone to shoot his own wife when Letty tries to get the codes, allowing her to walk away and even protecting her from another of Cipher's henchmen, Rhodes. This doesn't end well for Dom, however, as Cipher has Elena murdered, though it only fuels his need for revenge.
The team is shocked and disturbed at this new Dominic Toretto, but they're also worried because Cipher now has two things: God's Eye (a program they spent the previous movie chasing down and which Dom and Cipher steal in this one with some very fancy explosion acrobatics) AND the nuclear launch codes (also, let's not forget the EMP). Now they have to figure out where they're going to go next, and lo and behold, it's Russia.
Well, okay, middle of nowhere Russia where they make nuclear submarines, but you get my meaning.
See, Cipher is one of those delusional villains who think that they're doing the world something good: she wants to hold the governments accountable by having nukes she can use if they ever try to use theirs. Basically, a stalemate in which she emerges as the top dog because no one knows what precisely it is she wants. World domination? Accountability is honestly boring for someone like her in my opinion, but we never actually learn the truth.
We do learn one thing, though: she thinks she knows Dom, and what makes him the man he is. He may be an outlaw, but he has his own moral code, and she doesn't understand certain acts he pulled, but then she never tries to, anyway.
Back to the point: Dom heads to take control of the naval base AND a submarine, but of course the cavalry is right behind him with his team trying their very best to stop Cipher's delusions.
They manage to take the base back, and get the chip that launches the nukes from the sub, but Cipher still has control of the vessel and wants to take it to open sea where it will disappear, another thing the team can't allow, so they race against the clock, separatists on their tail and shooting their asses off, to try and beat her to the exit (and, also, to observe Roman drift like an idiot in his Lamborghini because ... that car is NOT ice friendly, obviously!).
Meanwhile, high above on Cipher's plane, she gets two special deliveries she isn't aware she asked for: namely, Brothers Shaw do a plane-jump.
See, Dom tricked Cipher back in New York and met with the Shaw matriarch, offering her a proposal and a deal, and he drew in members of his old team to take the "dead" Shaw into an ambulance while Dom was hidden from view by the Cuban high speed driver he'd turned at the beginning of the movie (in an act Cipher didn't understand because she's the idiot who thinks emotions are beneath her). Shaw's mother revived Shaw, then conned him into grabbing his brother Owen from prison so they can get onto Cipher's plane. Owen (the bad guy from movie six who has a scarred face because of an exploding plane, no joke) heads for the pilots and gains control of the aircraft, while Deckard cheerfully waves into a camera and goes directly for Dom's son.
What follows is probably the best sequence from any of these movies, bar none, as Jason Statham fights his way out of the plane, baby carrier in hand, with subtle checks to make sure the baby boy in there is a ) enjoying the music he brought along for him (so the kid doesn't hear all the crunches and shots) and b ) isn't stinking up the place by accident.
Now with his son in the right hands, Dom springs into action and rejoins his team, just in time to take the submarine out of commission. And while Deckard fails to get his hands on Cipher, who jumps out of her own plane with a parachute (and is later heard of in Athens for some reason), all's well that ends well, more or less.
The whole team gathers in New York for the traditional end BBQ, where Hobbs declines the offer to return to the police force, instead opting to stay home with his daughter. Shaw brings the baby to Dom, who introduces his son to Letty first, then the whole team.
Everyone, meet Brian Toretto!
I'll admit, I called a lot of shots that happened in this movie, proving that there's a large level of predictability, but that being said, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed myself watching a movie that much. The entire theatre laughed at Roman's antics on screen, and thoroughly enjoyed the insane car races.
And while there were some very nifty and beautiful mentions of Walker's character (the use of Buster and actual mentions of the other couple), the heaviness from the previous movie and Walker's subsequent death were absent here, which made for a much more enjoyable viewing, I think.
All in all, it was entertaining, it was high-speed, it had great music - it had it all!
Bring along nine and ten now!
xx
*images and video not mine
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