Cinemavenger

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The Fate of the Furious

How many dead Paul Walkers does it take to kill the Fast & Furious franchise?

Apparently, more than one.

Like a rusted-out 1968 Beetle that just won't fucking die, The Fate of the Furious is another lap with the street-racing-criminals-turned-secret-agents who putter along in a movie that's full of obnoxiously loud sound, surprisingly little fury and that signifies less than nothing.

What better way is there to honor the worm feast that is Walker (while building buzz for your latest flick, natch) than for Walker's "brothers," Vin "Tin Tin" Diesel and Dwayne "Howard" Johnson, to get into a very public playground pissing contest?  This kind of macho chest puffery is usually thought of as seeing whose dick is bigger.  Given the Herculean amount of steroids Diesel and Johnson must have shot into their asses over the years, could this be the first beef about whose sausage is smaller?

Soon after the opening - and only - street race, Charlize "Be Mine" Theron's hacker queen, Cipher, blackmails Diesel's Dom into betraying his team and helping her steal stuff so that she can rule the world with an iron vagina.

Two things.  First, Theron's hyper-intelligent, scaldingly sexy cyber-terrorist is exactly the kind of role that would have been delivered, gift-wrapped to Angelina Jolie 10 years ago, back before she had her tits chopped off.  Theron even sports the same blonde pseudo-dreads Jolie rocked in Gone in Sixty Seconds.  Second, Cipher's house-that-Jack-built plan to become some sort of global Judge Judy is so hopelessly intricate and poorly explained - it gets literally two sentences - that it should earn some sort of Pinky and the Brain award for animated futility.

The Rock and the rest of Dom's crew, Letty (Michelle "A" Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese "Les Paul" Gibson), Tej ("Qua" Ludacris) and Ramsey (Nathalie "O Come" Emmanuel), along with Little Nobody (Scott "Clint's Kid" Eastwood) and Deckard (Jason "Go For Bloke" Statham) for some reason, try to find/stop/catch/kill/help Dom.  Even though he's betrayed all of them.  And Little Nobody's a Fed.  And Deckard is Dom's sworn enemy.

From NYC to snowy Russia, cars crash, people beat the ever-lovin' shit out of each other, things explode, one liners get thrown out like empty beer cans, and physics doesn't just get ignored; it gets gang-raped and left for dead.

In a brave, new world where Swedes are getting mugged with cash transfer apps, Burger King ads activate Google devices and scientists have proven that babies are racist fucks by six-months-old (that's right, your little bundle of joy is already a teeny Archie Bunker), The Fate of the Furious is a throwback to a simpler and much dumber time.

Can you believe they've made eight of these high octane assloads?  Until December, that's one more than than the non-extended universe Star Wars saga!  As Yoda might say, "Me fuck!"  Unlike Paul Walker, Fast & Furious just won't die.

April 15, 2017