Speaking of the tension between bald badasses in the Fast franchise, Dwayne Johnson was more willing to play nice with Jason Statham, whose rogue British agent Deckard Shaw joined Team Toretto in The Fate of the Furious. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) Plus, it’s really hard not to notice how the entire film seems constructed to keep co-stars Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson from ever having to be on set together. Sometimes the franchise’s gimmick of being “The Avengers with cars” plays perfectly, but this particular globe-trotting adventure - in which Dom is forced to fight his own team while the supervillain Cipher (Charlize Theron) holds his son hostage - is somehow both overblown and forgettable, the Age of Ultron of Fast movies.

By this eighth entry in the franchise, the stakes and scale of the Toretto family’s missions have become so enormous that it’s hard to believe that this whole drama started with some pilfered DVD players. If Fast & Furious stands out for being a bit dreary, The Fate of the Furious resides on the opposite end of the spectrum. Still, its automotive action is pretty thrilling, and its colossal box office success ensured that the cast and director Justin Lin would be back in business for years to come. Gritty, angry, and self-serious, Fast & Furious is missing the heart and sense of play that make the later installments so appealing. In many respects, this is where the Fast Saga as we know it really begins, putting all of our lead characters on the same team for the first time and setting the next two films into motion, but it’s also a complete tonal outlier from the rest of the series. The story forces charming outlaw Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) to team up with the cop who infiltrated his gang and derailed his life, Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), to avenge the apparent murder of Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez). After the initial critical failure of standalone sequel Tokyo Drift (more on this later), Universal finally reunited the stars of the original The Fast and the Furious for a soft reboot of the franchise.

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