• Home
  • Meetings
  • Events
  • Blog
  • E-Board
  • Around Boston
  • Join
Northeastern University's Film Enthusiasts Club
.

AJ Martin on The Fate of the Furious

4/14/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
​It is truly odd to watch the eighth movie in a series without having ever seen a single other film in said series. This problem becomes more exacerbated when you quickly realize that, unlike stepping into, say, the eighteenth James Bond movie without having seen any of the others, all eight of the movies in the Fast and Furious franchise are canonically linked. This is a fact made even more confusing when you realize that a series of films that weas once about underground racing is now about international espionage, heists and fucking huge explosions. I had heard about the ridiculous nature of these movies, especially those since Fast Five, so I was eager to be subjected to a level of unprecedented lunacy. And I was not disappointed.

As a little experiment, I am going to attempt to explain the plot of this film and how it links to the others without opening Wikipedia or IMDB. Strap in, folks. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are on their honeymoon in Cuba, getting into a street race to try and remind the audience what the series used to be about. While in Havana, Dom is approached by a mysterious woman who is codenamed Cipher (Charlize Theron), who shows Don something that forces him to oppose his team and family. So when Dom and his team (Letty, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Missandei from Game of Thrones, and The Rock) are hired by the government to steal an EMP from the Germans(?), Dom takes the EMP for Cipher and gets The Rock arrested. With Dom and Cipher too dangerous as a team, Shadowy Government Dude and his young recruit (Kurt Russell and Scott Eastwood) force Dom’s old team to work with Bad Guy from a Previous Movie (Jason Statham) to take him down.

Confused? At first, I was too. The film throws around names and plot-points from previous movies quite a bit, which can make some of the film's big reveal moments seem lackluster for those of us who haven’t followed the series since the beginning. However, the plot is such standard action-movie fare that you pick up what is going on very quickly. You don’t need to have seen the prior movies to know that there is beef between The Rock and Statham, or that the team has dealt with Kurt Russell before. Details like this are revealed through the formulaic storytelling that litters Fate of the Furious, something that would be a much bigger problem if the film didn’t fully embrace the ridiculousness of its nature.

Speaking of which, this movie is goddamn crazy. I don’t think I can give some of the action sequences justice in text, but they are absolutely absurd and off-the-wall in the best way, so I’ll try to describe some of what happens. Cipher hacks into a bunch of cars on the top stories of a parking garage and forces them to drive through the windows to rain down on a limousine that is carrying the Russian ambassador and a suitcase of nuclear launch codes. The Rock gets shot with a rubber bullet, flexes the bullet out of his skin, does what can be only described as the fiercest battle-cry I’ve ever heard and proceeds to headbutt the shooter through his riot helmet. The Rock also clotheslines two people at once, rips a concrete structure out of a wall and punches a guy so hard that he does a full flip before his body hits the ground. A nuclear submarine fires a heat-seeking missile at Dom, who avoids it by using a modification in his car to jump over the sub and forcing the missile to blow-up the sub. As the sub explodes and it appears Dom will be engulfed in flames, his team creates a car-barricade to save him.

But all of this craziness is what makes the film fun. The scenes aren’t shot and edited in a way that is particularly groundbreaking or spectacular, but the sheer scope of the action sequences makes up for this. Having seen the film in IMAX, the cacophony of sound and visuals were a spectacle to behold. Maybe I would feel differently if I had seen the other films, as I am sure this is essentially a re-hash of at least the last three Furious movies, but I was thoroughly entertained during the action segments. Unfortunately, the movie loses a lot of steam when it tries to pretend that it has any semblance of dramatic weight. All of the characters feel like stereotypical place-holders, simply there to get us from action sequence to action sequence. And while none of them do a bad job (annoying characters like in Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the bane of flashy action films), none of them bring anything to the table when the movie tries to push its themes of family and trust. 

I feel like anybody who wants to see The Fate of the Furious is going to get exactly what they want. The movie is everything it appears to be: a shallow but entertaining romp through a series of increasingly ridiculous action set-pieces. If you are expecting anything more than that, you are definitely looking in the wrong place. But for those of you who are clamoring to see Jason Statham do this to two guys in riot gear or watch hundreds of cars slam into each other, you are in luck.

Grade: B
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    AJ Martin
    Andy Robinson
    Anime
    Anthony Formicola
    Anu Gulati
    Arjun Agarwal
    Arzu Martinez
    Ben Garbow
    Brandon Isaacson
    Brian Hamilton
    Carter Sigl
    Dan Simeone
    Discussion
    Elizabeth Johnson Wilson
    Eliza Rosenberry
    Emily Fisler
    Erick Sanchez
    Eric Tatar
    Essays
    Festivals
    Gabrielle Ulubay
    Haley Emerson
    Here's Some Movies
    Ian Wolff
    IFF Boston
    IFFBoston 2015
    Interviews
    Isaac Feldberg
    Kunal Asarsa
    Library
    Lists
    Marguerite Darcy
    Marissa Marchese
    Mary Tobin
    Meghan Murphy
    Mike Muse
    Mitch Macro
    Neel Shah
    Netflix Instant Watch
    Parth Parekh
    Patrick Roos
    Profiles
    Reviews
    Short Films
    Television
    This Week In Movies
    Tyler Rosini

    Want to Write for Us?

    Contact NUFEC President Ian Wolff at nufecblog@gmail.com if you're interested in writing for this blog!

    Archives

    April 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.