The Fate Of The Furious

It would be unfair to say that the wheels are falling off the Fast & Furious franchise with The Fate Of The Furious, the eighth chapter in the ongoing street-racers-turned-secret-agents series. But it is safe to suggest that this time around, the saga perhaps doesn't have quite as much pick-up as it displayed in previous episodes.

To be fair, The Fate Of The Furious is carrying a few more passengers than usual - Jason Statham joins the team as a reluctant hero after doing villain duty in the last movie, while a competently chilly Charlize Theron is the baddie this time around (and there's a cool cameo that'll remain a secret).

But the movie lacks that crazy but nimble quality director Justin Lin brought to instalments four through six - a simultaneous awareness and appreciation of just how ridiculous the franchise could get - and that Australian director James Wan capably mimicked in the seventh.

To be fair to incoming director F Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton), he has been handed the keys to a bus and been instructed to drive it like a Lamborghini. The Fate Of The Furious is bloated and burdened with too many stars, too many characters and too many subplots. That doesn't mean it's not fun. It just means it's not as much fun as its predecessors.

As the franchise has pointed out with monotonous regularity over the last few films, the notion of family means everything to hard-driving hero Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), who is fiercely loyal to everyone from his long-time love and new wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) to adversary-turned-ally Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).

So what would it take for him to "go rogue" and turn against them? Theron's cyber-criminal Cipher obviously has some pretty serious leverage to force Dom to join her team and pull off an audacious scheme that involves stealing nuclear codes and hijacking submarines.

In Fast & Furious logic, Hobbs, Letty and the other members of Dom's crew are the only ones capable of tracking him down. But likably shifty government agent Mr Nobody (Kurt Russell) reckons they need a bit of back-up and assigns Statham's Deckard Shaw as added muscle, much to the chagrin of Hobbs.

After impressively playing a bad guy in Furious 7, Statham slips easily into antihero mode here, entertainingly antagonising the blustery Johnson and cleverly mixing his sweet and savage sides in a sequence near the end that's the most enjoyable part of the film.

Statham's tongue-in-cheek approach actually provides a cool contrast to the overload that's present in just about every other aspect of The Fate Of The Furious, from the motorised mayhem of the car chases to Diesel's super-stern performance.