Fate of the Furious

Fate of the Furious
aka Fuck Physics

@NormFromCheers



The movie opens in Havana, Cuba, with a red Chevy Impala crushing down the coast. We then segue to a car meetup that appears to be exclusively made up of every Nomad & Bel Air that's in running condition. We then cut to Dominic Toretto, sauntering around the meetup with Letty, appreciating the machinery and scenery.

We then see a young man having his old junker being towed against his will at the behest of what appears to be the local bigshot racer. The young kid apparently owes Bigshot some money, and Bigshot is taking his car as payment.

Dom steps in and tries to smooth things over. Bigshot elects to mouth off to Dom and disparage Letty In response, Dom calls him out and offers to race for pinks - his car against Bigshot's Ford Fairlane, but racing his cousin's hoopty. Bigshot tells him that they'll race the Cuban Mile, a street road race.

Before the race, Dom strips down his cousin's car, removing most of the body paneling and rigging the vacuum line. They begin the race, and it's surprisingly even, despite the performance difference in the vehicles. It's so even that Bigshot calls one of his buddies to crash his motorcycle in to Dom's car. This causes Dom's car to catch fire, but not blow up. Dom's windshield cracks and shatters from the heat of the flames, so he flips a 180 and wins the race in reverse, but ends up driving the car in to the ocean, blowing it up in the process.

As Bigshot prepares to hand Dom his keys, Dom refuses them, stating that the respect he's earned from Bigshot is payment enough. As Dom walks away, he throws his cousin the keys to his Impala as a replacement for his car. Later, as Dom has some celebration sex with Letty, she asks him how he feels about starting a family. He seems receptive to the idea.

The next morning, on his way home from the market, Dom gets honeypotted in to looking at Charlize Theron's 'broken down' Jeep. As he looks at it, he realizes that she's removed the delay for the fuel pump. She tells him that she wants Dom to work for her. He politely tells her to fuck off, so she hands him an iPhone with some sort of photo on it. He reluctantly agrees to work for her, and she walks away, telling him that he'll betray everyone and shatter his family for her.

Smash cut to The Rock giving a pep talk about crushing one's enemies. The shot pulls out to reveal that he's giving this pep talk to his 8-year-old daughter's soccer team. He then leads the team in a Haka, a traditional New Zealand war dance, which scares the shit out of the other team. His daughter's team, the Dragons win handily while Rocky talks shop with his boss, agreeing to assemble a team to go after a stolen EMP device. Rocky calls Dom to assemble his team.

The EMP is being held by the German government in a hardened military bunker in Berlin. At this point in the franchise, this type of heist is so old-hat that we don't even get to see them planning or executing it. We smash cut to them literally busting out of the bunker in their cars, with German military police in tow. The team, which consists of Ramsay (the hacker from the last movie), Ludacris, Tyrese, Letty, Dom and Rocky. They lead them on a merry chase, until they cross a bridge next to a construction site. Then Luda drops in like a wrecking ball (literally), smashing the shit out of all of the German chasers, and allowing the team to get away scot-free. They then split up, with Dom and Rocky going one way, and the rest of the team going a different way. After a bit, Dom bumps Rocky in to a roadside utility box, crashing and rolling his truck. Dom gets out, jacks the EMP from Rocky's truck, and drives off, leaving Rocky for the German authorities to find. Rocky radios the rest of the team and informs them of the recent development in interpersonal dynamics, and waves them off of picking him up. Elsewhere, Dom is then picked up via airplane, which skims a runway for him to drive in to the cargo bay. It ends up that it's Charlize's plane. Back at the team's base, everyone's trying to suss out just what the fuck happened.

Back in Germany, Rocky's getting transferred to a maximum security prison. While he's walking in, Kurt Russell walks up, big as Billy-Be-Damned, with Clint Eastwood's kid, Scott, in tow. They offer Rocky a deal: Confess, plead guilty, and work in the black ops field with him, or don't confess, be found guilty, and rot in prison. Rocky says he's choosing a third option, being found not guilty. Eastwood, whom Rocky dubs Training Wheels, then tries to be a hardass with Rocky, invoking his daughter. This proves to be a tremendous mistake, and Rocky tunes him up, much to Kurt's amusement.

Inside the jail, Rocky has a lot of 'fans,' getting several death threats and catcalls on his way in. Eventually, he's led to a cell, which happens to be across from Jason Statham, and boy does he have something to say about that.

Back on Charlize's plane, Tormund Giantsbane from Game of Thrones is apparently her head of security. Also, Charlize has blonde cornrows for some reason, which seems like a tragic mistake. Moving on, Charlize tells Dom that the best thing in his life is the 10 seconds when he's racing. He seems to silently agree.

Smash cut back to Rocky's prison cell, and he's boxing the concrete walls and jawing with The Transporter. After Transporter glibly asks if Rocky intends to punch his way out, Rocky rips a cement table from the wall and begins curling it, which sure is mighty impressive. Shortly after that, Rocky's cell door opens, and so does Transporter's. They dare each other to leave, until guards in riot gear show up and start angrily Germaning at them. Statham pulls conduit from the wall and shorts out his electronic cell lock, opening all the cell doors. A prison riot ensues, meaning bean bags, tasers and shivs for all. They're the gifts that keep on giving.

Transporter makes a run for it, and Rocky gives chase. They basically fight their way through the whole prison floor, with Rocky no-selling bean bags and tasers the whole way out. Eventually, they end up outside of the prison, and just as they're about to go at it, Kurt Russell swoops in with a bunch of guys with guns, putting a stop to it and getting them out of prison.

Kurt brings them back to his base (colorfully titled Nowhere), where the rest of the team is already at, in handcuffs. Apparently that's Training Wheels' idea of 'bringing the team in.' Kurt orders the handcuffs to be removed, and Rocky and the team get down to getting to know just what is happening. Midway through the briefing, Kurt brings Transporter in, much to the consternation of everyone in the room. It turns out that Transporter and his brother, Gaston from the live-action Beauty and the Beast, were both victims in a way, of Charlize (here known as Cipher, a spooky Ghost Hacker) in the past, who ends up being the Big Evil behind the conflicts in the last two movies. She apparently tried to get Transporter to work for her in the same fashion she got Dom to work for her, but he rejected her. So, she went after his brother, Gaston, whom she was successful with.

Tyrese suggests they use God's Eye, the global geolocator Macguffin from the previous film, to locate Dom, who should lead them to Charlize. Kurt tells him that's a good idea, let's go for it. Ramsey, the creator of God's Eye, plugs Dom's name in, and we're off to the races. They get a hit, and then another hit, and another and another and so on. Apparently Charlize wrote a program to spoof God's Eye, giving false results around the world. However Luda and Ramsay immediately figure out how she did it, and proceed to reverse it. Just as they finish their coding, they get a hit on Dom's location: the exact building they're in.

BOOM! Explosions and concussion grenades for all! Dom and Charlize bust in, taunt the team, and steal the hard drive housing God's Eye. On their way out, Letty questions Dom as to his motives, and Charlize necks with him to fuck with her. Dom and Charlize, sittin' in a tree...

Back on the plane, it turns out that Charlize has Elena, Dom's Brazilian cop girlfriend from Fast 4 and Fast 5, and her baby. They've both been missing since Dom went to Cuba with Letty. Charlize then offers Dom a loaded gun and dismisses her security., basically daring him to kill her. He declines because he noticed that the lock on Elena's cell door takes two people to open, meaning that he wouldn't be able to open the door even if he killed every man of Charlize's on the plane. He does, however, hang his cross necklace from the previous movies outside her cell as a form of comfort.

Back in the remains of Nowhere, Transporter gets an idea to track something called ghost lanes. Ghost lanes are apparently holes in satellite coverage that would allow an airplane to traverse the globe without being tracked. The most recent ghost lane would take Dom to NYC, so the team decides he went there, pack up shop, and head out. They land in a building that houses every vehicle seized by the US Government on the East Coast, affectionately referred to as The Toy Shop.

Cut to Dom cruising around NYC in a Plymouth GTX. He's on comms with Charlize, and she's watching him through traffic cameras, directing his movements through the city in a rehearsal for whatever they're pulling off next. During the route, Dom's car starts misfiring, popping and farting down the road, so he pulls in to an alley to check the car out. Charlize's unhappy about this because it's a deviation from schedule, but Dom insists. While he's checking the engine out, a delivery van pulls in next to him to unload produce, which blocks the only camera Charlize has  access to. During this time, Dom ducks in to a nearby bar for a meeting with Dame Helen Mirren, who's in a Fast and Furious movie for some goddamn reason. This ups the count of Oscar-winners in this movie to two: her and Charlize. Anyway, he gives Helen an Apple Watch and asks for her help with something, then ducks back out just as the van leaves. Charlize sees him finishing up replacing a spark plug, and he's on his merry way again.

Back at The Toy Shop, Rocky and Transporter are busy modding cars and jawing back and forth. Rocky mentions that Transporter was a decorated war hero (which was touched upon in previous films), and asks what the fuck happened. Jason tells him he was disavowed after a failed mission, just like Rocky was in the beginning of this movie. They come to a mutual understanding of respect, and maybe even a little bit of friendship.

The next day, Dom's mission is a go. Charlize uses God's Eye to track and locate the Russian Defense Minister. Dom tracks him and his motorcade through the streets of the Big Apple, and once he locates him, Charlize has one of her minions activate every vehicle within a ten-block radius capable of remote control, which ends up being over 1000. She then somehow takes control of all 1000 at once, and pilots them to the motorcade, smashing the shit out of it. Setting aside the feasibility of hacking 1000 separate systems at the exact same time, the sheer logistics of piloting said 1000 separate systems is mind-numbing. Also, one of the trucks in the motorcade has an M134a mini gun mounted to it, which seems a bit excessive.

Once they're boxed in, she drives cars off the upper stories of a multi-story car park, and more or less buries most of the Russian Defense Minister's limo. Dom then approaches the limo with a bulletproof shield and a Ripsaw, which is a bigass chain-driven saw. He stands fast with the shield as the last remaining bodyguard empties his mag at him. After that futile gesture, he Ripsaws a hole in the limo, exposing the fuel tank. He pops a road flare, and threatens to drop it in the fuel tank unless the Defense Minister hand over a briefcase handcuffed to him arm, which ends up being a nuclear football. The Minister gives in, and gives Dom the case.

The team hears the chaos on the police scanner, and rolls out to confront Dom. As he's driving away from the dogpile of cars on the motorcade, the team finds him, and they give merry chase. Training Wheels, or Little Nobody,  as he's now being called (Scott Eastwood), charges after Dom, and gets suckered in to a trap that buries his car under scaffolding. The rest of the team eventually surrounds Dom and deploys a series of harpoons on steel wire tethered to their cars. As they try to keep Dom harpooned in place, he begins rocking his car back and forth, dragging the team's cars along with him. As the team exclaims that his car has over 5000 horsepower, i realize that that is a) a preposterous number for them to throw out, as a truly uncontrollable street car would have around 2000 horsepower, and b) none of this is how physics works. Anyway, eventually, Dom creates enough slack in the lines to flip all the cars, including his.

Dom pulls himself out of the wreckage, takes the nuclear football and makes a run for it on foot. Transporter and Letty gives chase. Transporter and Dom get in to a standoff, and Dom apparently shoots Transporter (spoiler: he doesn't). Dom keeps running, but then gets in to a standoff with Letty. She grabs the case, and Dom can't bring himself to shoot her. She runs around the corner straight in to Tormund. He friends to grab the case from her, but she doesn't let go. He puts a gun to her head, but she still doesn't let go, so Dom steps in and puts a gun to Tormund's head. He doesn't budge, so Letty lets go, and Tormund runs off with Dom.

In the team's post-mission debriefing, Little Nobody keeps saying 'nucular', which is eternally frustrating to me.

Back on the plane, Charlize is displeased that Dom didn't immediately shoot Letty. She shows this displeasure by shooting Elena in the head. She also tells Dom that Tormund knew Shaw and his little brother, Owen (Gaston from the most recent incarnation of Beauty and the Beast). Cipher apparently ran both of them at one point, whether they knew it or not. That's why she targeted Dom - partly because he was good enough to fuck up her plans twice, and partly because h3e inconvenienced her by fucking up her plans twice. She wanted Russia's nuclear football in order to threaten world superpowers when they 'stepped out of line.'

The team tracks Tormund to a Russian submarine base that's been overtaken by a different separatist group. Apparently Russia just hasn't cared enough to retake the base, so Tormund and Dom and supposed to go in, take the base, and then take a sub that's been nuclearized to go along with the nuclear football Charlize already has. They decide, 'fuck it,' all bets are off, and load out to go save the world.

Dom charges the gates in a souped-up, all-terrain Dodge Charger with an insane body and ground effects kit. Side question: Where do these guys come up with the time to craft and install these custom body kits? Anyway, Dom charges the base gate, and dives around raising merry hell, setting off the stolen EMP twice in the process. It also allows Charlize to 'carjack' the submarine somehow.

At the same time, the team rides in as well, making for the submarine dock controls and for the submarine missile launch room. They try to counter-jack the sub from Charlize, who is trying to launch one of the nukes. Tyrese and Scott Eastwood get locked in the launch control room on the sub, and Ramsay and Letty are trying to keep control of the dock controls to prevent the launch of the sub in to the water. Ramsay fails to sever Charlize''s control of the sub, but Tyrese manages to pull enough computer chip boards to disable the missile launch.  Charlize freaks out and tells her minion to drop the sub in the water and get it out of there.

As the sub prepares for launch, the team disembarks from the sub and load up in their various vehicles, which includes a mini tank, a RAM truck modified in to kind of an MRAP, a Lamborghini and a dune buggy kind of truck. They decide to go for the sea gate at the mouth of the bay to disable it in an effort to block the sub from reaching open water and disappearing forever. Dom heads for high ground to meet Tormund. The team is chased by the remaining separatists that held the submarine base. 

During the chase, Tyrese, in the Lambo (which is a dumbass car to choose for a mission in the frozen North of Russia), attracts the most attention and fire from the pursuers, mostly because he's in a blaze orange Lambo. Eventually, he gets bogged down in a fractured ice shelf. Ludacris harpoons Tyrese's door from the mini tank in an effort to pull him back on to solid ice, but it don't work. Tyrese grabs on to his door as it pulls free, and his car sinks. Unfortunately, all this moving around makes the harpoon line snap (which probably ought to have snapped back and hurt Tyrese something fierce). As the door comes skidding to a halt, Tyrese is surrounded by several men on snowmobiles, all of whom he handily dispatches in a surprising show of skill and marksmanship. He's then picked up by Rocky in his MRAP. Meanwhile, Dom and Tormund are watching all the festivities from the high ground (how the hell did Dom get his Charger up that fucking hill?).

We then smash cut to Charlize's plane, which has been boarded mid-air by Transporter (See, told you he wasn't dead!) and his brother Gaston. We flash back to a meeting between Transporter and Helen Mirren, who is evidently his and Gaston's mom. We also see the delivery van that was blocking his meeting was piloted by the Cuban Bigmouth from the opening race. Anyway, Transporter broke Gaston out of jail, and they somehow flew in to the cargo hold of Charlize's airplane (I can't stress this enough) mid-air. Charlize sees them on a security camera as they effortlessly carve their way through her men, and she freaks out that Dom didn't actually kill Transporter. Transporter's in radio contact with Dom, and he calls him when he's got Dom''s baby son safely in his possession,  placing him in a bassinet. After Dom hears this,  he kills the shit out of Tormund, who dies very badly.  That bassinet is apparently bulletproof, because Transporter uses it as a shield a few times on his way out, which seems pretty ballsy.

Back on the ice, Charlize angrily launches a torpedo from the submarine in the general direction of the team and its pursuers, and it ends up shooting out of the ice. Rocky pulls alongside the torpedo as it somehow glides along the ice, and pushes the torpedo away from the team and toward the pursuers with his bare hands while skating in the ice in his boots. It's just a ridiculous as it sounds. Afterward, Dom Dukes of Hazzard's his way back to the team.

After most of the pursuers are killed by that torpedo, Charlize breaches the sub out of the ice, and keeps motoring ahead, trying to hit those cars, i guess? She fires a heatseeker missile at the team, and Dom activates an afterburner that he has mounted to his car for some reason. This attracts the heatseeker, so Dom breaks off from the team and drives around, eventually. Dukes of Hazzarding through the sub, which causes the missile to hit and destroy the sub. Dom''s car is also on fire, so he bails out and rolls. As the fireball from the sub makes its way toward him, he's surrounded by the team's cars, which shield him.

Backon the plane, Transporter finally find Charlize. As he monologues before shooting her, she throws a grenade at the plane hull, blowing a hole in it. She grabs a parachute before diving out the hole, leaving Transporter empty-handed except for the baby.

Cut to an unspecified time later, and the team is having a family dinner on a New York rooftop. Kurt Russell shows up with all kinds of good news and Transporter in tow. He offers Rocky his old job back, but Rocky declines, stating he's retired from the DSS. Dom and Transporter have a good moment, and he stays for dinner. Apparently he's part of the family now? As they sit down to dinner, Dom introduces his kid to everyone else as 'Brian', named after his old friend from the previous movie,  ending the movie.

4.5/5 Unreasonalbe Stunts That Defy the Laws of Physics