Narrative holes and sloppy directing make The Fate of the Furious result in a messy entry to the Fast and Furious franchise, and the absences of former director Justin Lin and leading man Paul Walker are both acutely felt in the problematic latest installment in the series.
It wasn’t long ago that the Fast and the Furious was my favorite Hollywood tentpole franchise. Before I get into details on The Fate of the Furious, it’s worth briefly recounting how the series has developed over the last few films, as it is clear The Fate of the Furious is a direct response to choices made in Furious 7. The fifth film solidified a unique, engaging tone and brought wonderfully shot action and driving to the franchise. The sixth continued in that tradition. With Lin as director, the series was revitalized and expanded to become a hollywood powerhouse. The future of the series was already in question when Lin left the franchise and Saw director James Wan came on to head up Furious 7. The series was thrown further into disarray with Walker’s tragic death during the production of Furious 7.
It was clear watching Furious 7 that the creative team was working around some holes with the loss of their lead, but what was even more obvious was how the film would have been extremely flawed even if Walker had completed filming his scenes. Wan ultimately failed to understand the tone Lin had developed over his four-film tenure on the franchise. Wan’s film doesn’t feel like The Fast and Furious, but more like a generic action movie. Of the many problems with Furious 7, the greatest is that there is almost no driving. Car jousting may seem great on paper but on film it works no better than the motor-cycle version did in Mission: Impossible 2. Fast Five and Furious Six made me believe I was watching the greatest drivers in the world, but all they can do in Furious Seven is drive into each other from a hundred feet away? Weak. Beyond that, the action scenes favored style over emotional engagement, so suddenly I was fighting to care about characters that I had spent years caring about.
The Fate of the Furious is a direct response to the shortcomings of Furious 7. Once again a new director is brought on, this time Straight Outta Compton’s F. Gary Gray. You can feel the series attempting to shift back to the tone of Lin’s films. There are far more scenes based around driving, set pieces that feel akin to the tank and cargo plane sequences from previous entries. Nonetheless, try as he might to recreate a formula, Gray fails to make a film as coherent and engaging as Lin’s entries in the series.
Mild to major spoilers follow from this point onward. The plot focuses on Dom’s ‘betrayal’ of his family. Of course, anyone who has seen any of these films knows Dom cares about nothing more than family. Though the film tries to withhold the reason for his betrayal, it is pretty easy to guess from the start that the only reason he would betray family, is for family. The long short of it is Elena, Dom’s romantic interest from Fast Five, has been kidnapped, along with Dom’s child. No matter how many intense music cues the film prods the audience with, there is never a moment you’re convinced this might be a real betrayal.
With Dom separated from the family and Brian (Paul’s character) retired, the main team is left with the supporting characters. The film tries to throw a bunch of things at the wall to see if anything sticks as a replacement for Brian. Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs is given more of a leading role, but his character functions best as muscle-covered comic relief. Scott Eastwood also plays a new character who seems to be a direct attempt to fill the straight-laced cop who might join the family Paul Walker type of role. I wouldn't be surprised if Universal waits to hear response to the character before deciding if he will be a part of the family or remain on the sidelines. If his role in Fate is anything to go on, he’d be best left to the sidelines. He doesn’t bring much to the film, beyond being someone for Tyrese to ridicule.
Gray also attempts to use the arch-villain from Furious 7 as a possible rehabilitated team member. Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw killed Han and nearly killed Dom’s baby nephew, so no matter what he does now, it is very hard to imagine him being accepted into the family. In its desperation to try out new leading characters, Fate pushes through a redemption arc that feels pretty phoned in. While Statham was underused in Furious 7 and it’s great to see more of him here, his character makes much more sense as a peripheral villain who sometimes works with the family, rather than being merely integrated as he is at the end of Fate. This cheapens Han’s death, an event that multiple films in the series revolve around.
While the action scenes have all the ingredients of Lin’s, the resulting mix leaves something to be desired. Gray lacks the natural knack for shooting action scenes that Lin has. In fact, Fate repeats exact shots that Lin and Wan used in their films, but the timing and cutting always feels a bit off. Nothing lands quite as well as you imagine it could have. Subtly these small cutting, shooting and pacing missteps run through the film, leaving it a far cry from the consistently amazing action sequences and editing we’ve gotten used to in Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6. There are a few other striking narrative problems in the film, one dealing with Elena’s treatment, another being an incredibly awkward interaction in Cuba. In general Gray was not able to rise to the challenge of directing such a sprawling film and the audience is left feeling disconnected as a result.
What’s more, Lin could shoot cars as if they were characters. This allowed us to connect each car to the driver and care about shots of the cars, even if there were no shots of the driver reacting. This is a huge part of why the driving sequences in Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6 feel so engaging. This was completely lost in Furious 7, and though Gray seems to be actively trying to create it, he’s doing it from the outside in, without truly understanding why Lin’s shots work when they do.
I can only hope the series continues to try new directors until one really knocks it out of the park. Wan tried to do something different with the series, and his attempt failed, while Gray tried to recapture Lin’s films but did so badly. The series continues to struggle to find out what it is without Justin Lin in the director’s chair and it begins its struggle to find out what it is without Paul Walker. Both of these struggles show clearly in the film, and while it may represent a course correction away from Furious 7 it fails to live up to the franchise at its best.
