Fast and Furi­ous 8

How big is too big? Well, in the case of Dwayne John­son, it depends on what we’re mea­sur­ing. His big smile is a big rea­son why he’s cur­rent­ly the high­est paid actor in Hol­ly­wood. His shoul­ders are also big – but big enough to car­ry a fran­chise the size of The Fast and the Furi­ous? That appears to be the real ques­tion on direc­tor F Gary Gray’s mind in a film that rel­e­gates long-serv­ing series reg­u­lars Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez and Tyrese Gib­son in favour of its totemic, trash-talk­ing new­er recruit. And with good rea­son, too.

Before The Rock brought his con­sid­er­able bulk to the par­ty, these films were still being made on the small­er end of the block­buster scale. But since DSS agent Luke Hobbs made his first appear­ance in 2011’s Fast Five, the fran­chise has swollen into a stag­ger­ing­ly pop­u­lar bil­lion-dol­lar prop­er­ty which now rests on John­son more than any­one would like to admit. That includes bald ​’n’ brawny OG Vin Diesel, whose report­ed on-set beef with his Fast and Furi­ous 8 co-star was con­ve­nient­ly put to bed ahead of the film’s release.

See­ing as fate and fam­i­ly are the cen­tral themes here, it’s both fit­ting and a lit­tle iron­ic that Diesel is removed from the pic­ture ear­ly on. After a NOS­tal­gia-charged street race in Havana, Cuba, Dominic ​“Dom” Toret­to is con­front­ed by Char­l­ize Theron’s mys­te­ri­ous cyber ter­ror­ist, Cipher (think the ice-cold badassery of Imper­a­tor Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road mixed with the wild-eyed flight­i­ness of Arrest­ed Development’s res­i­dent MRF, Rita). For rea­sons unknown to Dom’s crew, he’s sud­den­ly forced to go rogue, putting Hobbs firm­ly in the nar­ra­tive dri­ving seat.

If this is intend­ed as an acknowl­edge­ment of a chang­ing of the guard, it’s not exact­ly sub­tle. And yet the way John­son is allowed to dom­i­nate pro­ceed­ings – lit­er­al­ly fill­ing the frame, he’s what IMAX was made for – actu­al­ly makes a lot of sense with­in the wider evo­lu­tion­ary con­text of the series. Life after Dom would have been impos­si­ble to imag­ine before, but this film – the first in the post-Paul Walk­er era – effec­tive­ly intro­duces the idea that in order to keep the engine run­ning smooth­ly, some­times old­er, weak­er parts need to be replaced.

Which is not to say that Diesel is defec­tive, nor that his involve­ment in the fran­chise is like­ly to end here – his last act redemp­tion sug­gests he will almost cer­tain­ly be around for the next ride. But after 16 years of putting ped­al to met­al, it’s telling that he no longer feels indis­pens­able. Indeed, Johnson’s phys­i­cal stature and megas­tar sta­tus now seem direct­ly pro­por­tion­al to the inflat­ed com­mer­cial and fan expec­ta­tions each new Fast and Furi­ous film brings with it. Watch­ing Fast and Furi­ous 8, you have to won­der how either could pos­si­bly get any bigger.

Jason Statham again rel­ish­es flex­ing his action-com­e­dy mus­cle as Deckard, kick­ing and shoot­ing his way through a heav­i­ly-guard­ed air­craft while clutch­ing a baby in a clear nod to John Woo’s Hard Boiled. And Helen Mir­ren shows up as a sweary cock­ney crime matri­arch in a brief cameo that fails to deliv­er on its ini­tial threat of humour and vio­lence. Cru­cial­ly though it is John­son who gets the biggest laughs, he who gets to dri­ve the biggest cars and per­form the biggest stunts. This is his vehi­cle, plain and simple.