The Fate of the Furious

The "Fast and the Furious" franchise has been inflating ever since "Fast Five" mixed up the formula a little by importing a big star nemesis with Dwayne Johnson and inflating the action setpieces into something bigger-scale - essentially, creating a modern multi-racial super-team to go on globe-hopping adventures. And as the scale has increased, so has the box office.

Of course, with inflation can come bloat, and unfortunately "Fate of the Furious" doesn't always avoid this. The idea of turning Vin Diesel's Dom against the rest of the team fiddles with the dynamics interestingly, but the withholding-then-revealling of his motivation to change sides is handled a bit messily, meaning the reveal feels a bit weak when it happens.

Director F. Gary Gray is a first-timer to this series although not entirely to rev-headed action (he did the 2000s remake of "Italian Job") and he doesn't have the effortless action-cool that Justin Lin (who did entries 3-6) or James Wan (who did 7) gave the series - instead it's a little bit plodding. It doesn't entirely help that the series has a reluctance to let women get involved in particularly physical action - of the three female leads, Charlize Theron as the baddie is basically a tech baddy stuck doing a lot of typing, Michelle Roduiguez gets to drive a car a bit but is never allowed to be the subsitute leader-of-the-gang when Vin Diesel turns rogue, and Nathalie Emmanuel's computer hacker is basically treated as argument fodder for the ever-quibbling support chaacters Roman and Tej.

There are compensations. A midfilm setpiece in the middle of New York doesn't exactly ring true (Manhattan is one big traffic jam, not made for free-flowing action) but there are some clever ideas, mostly at the villain end. And bringing back Jason Statham as an ally rather than a nemesis is quite enjoyable - in particular, there's amusing semi-homo-erotic tension between Statham and Johnson (substituting for previous tension between Johnson and Diesel). And there is a terrific mid-film cameo that does produce great giggles. And this will undoubtedly do enough box office to bring the team back again. But it is a lesser entry in the series.