Midway through Fast & Furious 8 , I found myself mildly confused: was I watching the movie it claimed to be or was it yet another xXx movie? One can never tell the difference these days. Vin Diesel with an almost Sylvester Stallone-ish slur is all over our faces. Deepika Padukone was his arm candy there, Michelle Rodriguez does the honours here. There are uber-cool teams pursuing some top secret mission. It’s Samuel L. Jackson as the NSA agent there and Kurt Russell heading the ops team here. What binds them together are super-fast cars and bikes, high-adrenaline chases in exotic and sometimes improbable locations (Cuba, Philippines, Detroit, New York City, Russia … you name it.) And not to forget the cheesiest one-liners:
“He knows what matters is who’s behind the wheel.”
“You think THAT is important?”
“I don’t think … I know so!”
In Part 8, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) goes rogue on his team while speeding off with a high-end electromagnetic pulse jammer in Berlin. The question everyone asks is why. But that’s not what we signed up for, we know that. What matters is pure action. The fight sequences are not so much performed as they are choreographed to perfection. A prison break sequence involving Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) feels like a splendid bit from a Michael Jackson music video. A high-stakes race between vintage cars in Havana leaves you gasping as if it was the 100-metre dash at the Olympics. This is also a world where torpedoes on ice can be made to swerve using your bare hands and a clever turn of the wheel. Adidas’ ‘Impossible is nothing’ tagline fits perfectly into the scheme of things. Perhaps they consider product-placing themselves with this franchise.
When Hobbs says the team has been at this for 16 years, it really hits you. Only Hugh Jackman as Wolverine has had a longer run than this bunch. It is impressive because the makers of Fast & Furious never had to worry about plotlines as much as the folks at Marvel. All they had to do was come up with permutations and combinations of expensive cars burning rubber on every type of surface possible. And stick them together with textbook twists and surprise cameos. Nothing makes the fanbase go crazier. Just wait until they pay tribute to the late Paul Walker (who played Brian O’ Connor) to see if you can hear anything apart from the audience’s “Wooohooooo!”
Did we mention Charlize Theron makes a terrific villain, as the ice-cold Cipher? And of course, she escapes from getting caught! How else are we going to see Fast & Furious 9 ?
