[CRITICAL] FAST AND FURIOUS 8

In his ascension to the legitimacy artistic FAST AND FURIOUS 8 puts the guest prestigious as hitch-hikers who get lost on the way…

What can we really expect from yet another component of the saga FAST AND FURIOUS ? After the first four episodes in free wheel – the filmmakers and the main characters crisscrossing each other with no real consistency – the fifth of the name had, it seems, paved the way for a new seam, say more in line with standard hollywood. Dropped the tuning, the car races illegal, and the bimbos in bikini – the aesthetics of advertising, and highly touted entering now more in the form of a wink – to be refocused around the themes more universal as that of the frank ” camaraderie “, and, of course, of the “family” with all the values that they can drain in their wake.

This spirit of “film strip” would be enough to give the saga a capital sympathy almost exponential rise over the episodes. Even more smart that the friends of George Clooney (Ocean’s Eleven), and most importantly, more trend as those of Sylvester Stallone (The Expendables), the recruits of Vin Diesel combined an explosive cocktail ofactioners “badass” but sympathetic (who have children, brothers and sisters, mothers), girls, sexy but smart (Gal Gadot, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky) and sidekicks stylish (Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson). By inflating their casting original, with the arrival of big names like Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, “second knives” of luxury (Luke Evans, Djimon Hounsou, Scott Eastwood), martial arts (Ronda Rousey, Tony Jaa, Joe Taslim), or even to recruit actors oscarisées (Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren), the saga was perfectly able to sustain, and especially legitimate in the eyes of the world, its huge success.

However, the interest that offer the saga on film remain minimal. It is more of a promise of sale : which star will be recruited in the next pane ? Who will play the bad-guy ? Against which the Diesel and/or Johnson are they going to fight ? Questions rudimentary, of course, but this kind of’pull movie that wants to be THE entertainment variety show of the time (almost as much as a Marvel if we compare the budgets allocated to each film). But if all this ambition appears more and more real on the “paper”, it is still necessary to see what it gives on the screen. Because in Hollywood, few filmmakers have shown they are good enough to shoot this kind of delirium boomy in testosterone. Without going into the filmmakers of another age (Walter Hill, Ted Kotcheff, John Milius, John McTiernan), some “doers” hollywood would probably this mixture indigestible a “hair” more enjoyable (James Mangold, Dan Gilroy, Gareth Evans, Doug Liman, Matthew Vaughn, Christopher McQuarrie, Chad Stahelski) that the eternal will that recruit the saga (Rob Cohen, John Singleton, Justin Lin, James Wan and for this eighth installment F. Gary Gray). In fact, there is a huge difference between believing in the ” fun and uncomplicated “, and multiplying the pieces of bravoures of a sudden pyrotechnics, stunts absurdly spectacular and digital effects more or less cared for, and truly, without complacency but with “viscéralité” in its approach to the body, motifs and themes dear to the cinema of the action.

“Fast and Furious 8 is still below the previous opus” Click To Tweet

While in previous episodes, the succession frenetic action scenes left little room for drama as such, to these moments of pause are often hazardous and expected to develop the famous relationships between the characters, except to satisfy the lowest instincts of the dominant male (misogyny, humour regressive). This new component emits the idea, almost whimsically, to explore the personality of Dominic Toretto, the least charismatic and the least sympathetic of all the characters of the saga. Preaching the good word like the pope on a day of mass, the inimitable Diesel appears as a kind of god megalomaniac, literally a prisoner of its own fictional universe (in the image of the first sequence of the film where he is able to “change” people dixit himself). But then we thought untouchable on his haven of peace cuban, here arrives Cipher (Theron, who talks a lot), a cyber-terrorist who wants to “empower” the government by threatening to throw nuclear missiles across the globe if they misbehave. But she was obviously in need of ” Dom ” and his team of shock in order to fulfill his plan. In order to achieve its purposes and thus, incidentally, to make it sing, it has an argument of weight : his son (he had with Elsa Pataky before the producers had the idea to bring back Michelle Rodriguez from the dead). So much for the plot, which sees Dom turn against his “family” to save his offspring.

Fortunately, this argument will give rise to one or two scenes shifted where we see Dom letting two small tears, which were visibly struggling to run, meeting for the first time his son or even the improbable sequence of his rescue by Statham himself. But in terms of “guilty pleasure” – this argument cynical behind which the film buff male is hiding to hide its desire to regression and dehumanising – the movie still falls short of the previous opus. Among the action scenes, the logic of which remains more impressive than the previous one, only the sequence of the escape from the prison draws its pin from the game because it is built around the rivalry between Johnson and Statham – the most glittering of the film – and on the physical characteristics of each, and agility against the power of the other.

But once is not custom in the saga, the confrontation is avoided, at least in its physical form, because the verbal level, the two “comic” chain jokes to broken sticks. Why make it complicated (choreograph and make the cutting of a battle) when two valves property manly sufficient to satisfy her man. The image sequences in the streets of New York and on the ice, the execution is lazy and easy, merely a lot of CGI and noise for little participation, emotional and sensory. There are so few things that we have learned from this series Z friquée, apart from the fact that it is a excellent manufactured product – very quickly standardized by the standards established by modes changing (after the guy from The Raid, he has the right to the bearded redhead from Game of Thrones) – in the sense that Hollywood can repeat this type of formula employed for several decades. The problem is not that such films exist, because all tastes are in nature, but they are only a substitute of more in the system proscribed by Disney (and his model “sérialesque” marvelien and/or one of the remakes and other making reboots a thing to death), and that abnormalities, either successful or not (John Carter, Jupiter’s Ascending, The Edge of Tomorrow, Mad Max, Fury Road, Gravity), gradually be eradicated from cinema to big show.

Antoine Gaudé

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