Standing in Dom’s way in this endeavour are his old racing pals, including Dwayne Johnson’s law-enforcement-officer turned speed-racer, and – in a nice twist – Deckard Shaw, Jason Statham’s big bad from the last outing, now performing the role of acid-tongued antihero. With one swipe of her smartphone, she’s blackmailed Dom with some inconvenient detail from his past, and he’s soon helping her steal a series of powerful doohickeys that together might just bring about nuclear destruction. Life is sweet, and there’s talk of starting a family, but crashing into view comes Charlize Theron’s Cipher, a tech-savant terrorist, whose aptitude with a keyboard would make Anonymous blush.
The set-up: Dom, Vin Diesel’s sonorous-voiced crim with a heart of gold, is living in Cuba with his belle, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). It’s an incongruous addition, and one that frequently seems in danger of lurching into techno-jargon incomprehensibility but things race along at such a ferocious lick you scarcely have time to question the moments of incongruity (chiefly, how can so many supercars be also somehow explosion-retardant). The Fate of the Furious trailer: The Rock, Vin Diesel and Charlize Theron star in new film Guardianįor The Fate of the Furious – variously referred to as Fast & Furious 8, Fast 8 or, for those really pressed for time, F8 – another bolt-on has been attached to its action-film chassis, that of the high-stakes cyberthriller.