Cipher (Charlize Theron) recruits Dom (Vin Diesel) in “The Fate of the Furious." (Photo: Universal Pictures) 
 
 Eight chapters in, the “Fast and Furious” franchise is now a fantasy fulfillment factory. Anything you can dream up — as long as it involves cars, dudes and speeches about loyalty — it can produce; the more ridiculous the better. Want to see a fleet of cars get chased across a frozen lake by a Russian submarine? Have a seat, friend. 
 
 Don’t get caught up in the details; normal, everyday logic does not apply to this series, and neither do normal, everyday rules. So if you’re not interested in seeing a fleet of cars get chased across a frozen lake by a Russian submarine, that’s between you and your maker. As long as you are, “The Fate of the Furious” is a wildly entertaining thrill ride that never lets its foot off the gas. 
 
 “Fate” — as in F8, get it? — is super-stuffed with stunts, machismo and character moments from its gigantic cast, which is now the size of a small community. This franchise is like a snowball rolling down a hill that keeps collecting new trinkets along the way, in this case cast members. So now, in addition to cast vets Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, there’s also Jason Statham (who appeared in “Fast & Furious 6” but officially debuted in “Furious 7”) and Kurt Russell (who arrived in “Furious 7”), along with newbies Scott Eastwood, Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron. The series is employing half of Hollywood. 
 
 This time around, the crew is enlisted to stop “a cyber terrorist known as Cypher” (that’s Theron, wearing her hair in spring break cornrows), who is out to get her hands on some nukes and blackmails Diesel’s Dominic Toretto into helping her. Wait, Toretto, a bad guy? Yep, and it leads to the immortal line of dialogue, “Dominic Toretto just went rogue.” 
 
 The script is full of these glowing neon signs, which read like bumper stickers and will guide you along even if you’re not paying close attention to the particulars of the plot: “You make a deal, you gotta live up to it”; “I don’t work for anyone”; “Hell yeah, let’s roll.” 
 
 And roll it does, beginning with an outrageous car chase through the streets of Cuba, continuing with a New York City smash-em-up and leading toward the big submarine chase at the end. (In between there’s a prison riot, just in case you were getting squirmy in your seat.) Director F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”), the series’ fifth helmer, has a great sense of rhythm and keeps things rolling, even as the film stretches past the two-hour mark. 
 
 Historians will remember 2011’s Justin Lin-directed “Fast Five” as the entry where the “Fast” series officially went off the rails, shifting from a too-serious meditation on bros and their engines to a highly adrenalized comic book fantasy in a constant state of one-upmanship with itself. That movie opened with Diesel and Paul Walker (R.I.P.) launching their car off a cliff and skydiving off the back of it without the aid of a parachute, still the best sequence in any of the “Fast” movies. Ever since then, the series has been finding new ways to combine autos, glances between two drivers, explosions and soliloquies about the importance of family, much in the same way Taco Bell constantly finds new ways to re-purpose the same four ingredients. 
 
 Theron, in full menacing whisper mode, should be having more fun; maybe she could borrow some from Gibson, who is forever having the time of his life in these movies. (Honest question: Why have no other movies used Gibson the way the “Fast” movies do?) Everyone else is on board for “Fate’s” unquestionable levels of silliness, which is good because at one point there’s a car chase that resembles the animal stampede from “Jumanji.” 
 
 There are certainly questions to be asked — Johnson has an endorsement deal with Under Armour but does his character, too? — but we’re at a time where the questions are better left to more pressing issues of the day. 
 
 “The Fate of the Furious” is like playing with Hot Wheels after injecting them with steroids. Like the man says, “hell yeah, let’s roll.” 
 
 agraham@detroitnews.com 
 
 (313) 222-2284 
 
 @grahamorama 
 
 ‘The Fate of the Furious’ 
 
 GRADE: B 
 
 Rated PG-13: for prolonged sequences of violence and destruction, suggestive content, and language 
 
 Running time: 136 minutes 
 
 The Fate of the Furious (PG-13) 
 
 The good times keep rolling in this eighth installment of the hyper-adrenalized franchise which now stars half of Hollywood. (136 minutes) GRADE: B 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2opag6S ||||| Published on Mar 9, 2017 
 
 The Fate of the Furious Trailer #2 (2017) : Check out the new The Fate of the Furious trailer starring Charlize Theron, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Dwayne Johnson! Be the first to watch, comment, and share trailers and movie teasers/clips dropping @MovieclipsTrailers. 
 
 
 
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 When a mysterious woman seduces Dom into the world of crime and a betrayal of those closest to him, the crew face trials that will test them as never before. 
 
 
 
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 The Fandango MOVIECLIPS Trailers channel is your destination for hot new trailers the second they drop. The Fandango MOVIECLIPS Trailers team is here day and night to make sure all the hottest new movie trailers are available whenever, wherever you want them. ||||| 3 out of 4 stars Title The Fate of the Furious Written by Chris Morgan Directed by F. Gary Gray Starring Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Charlize Theron, Jason Statham Genre Action Classification PG Country USA Language English Year 2017 
 
 Everything you need to know about the current state of the Fast and Furious franchise, Hollywood's most improbable success story, can be gleaned from the title of its eighth film: The Fate of the Furious. Almost 16 years old – the original entry, The Fast and the Furious, debuted in the practically Rockwellian America of June, 2001 – the series now purports to carry the burdens that come with age. "Fate," after all, is a loaded word, one weighed down by the promises of responsibility, change and death. "Fate" implies an inescapable final destination, a road map to a future of narrative closure and emotional catharsis. 
 
 But "Fate" still rhymes with "eight." 
 
 So just as its title implies, The Fate of the Furious offers a soft sell of maturity, with the underlying promise that it hasn't abandoned the goofy antics of its youth (even if producers didn't go with, say, a har-har The F8 of the Furious). If anything, the new film is more attuned to its puerile sensibilities than ever before – and this is a series that once punted a sports car through not one, not two, but three Abu Dhabi skyscrapers as if the act was simply what nature intended. 
 
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 Which is how we find ourselves, at truly any single point in this new film, faced with one jaw-dropping scenario after another, each defying the laws of physics and logic in a thousand different ways: Hordes of hacked sports cars rain from the sky in midtown Manhattan. Human beings eject themselves out of vehicles hurtling along the frozen ice fields of Siberia at hundreds of miles per hour with barely a scratch to prove their mortality. A man – well, if we can call Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson a mere man – gently guides a missile out of his path, propelling it toward an enemy's fiery doom. Each moment is unbelievable, insane in its concept and execution, but genuinely thrilling all the same. 
 
 Somehow, a narrative ties all the above set-pieces together, but discussing the plot of any Fast and Furious movie is a true endeavour, as each story is seemingly built backward – design the bombastic bits first, then reverse-engineer those around a mishmash of clichés, wisecracks, MacGuffins and opportunities for Vin Diesel to attempt a clear enunciation of the word "family," preferably while clad in a tank top and/or sipping his signature Corona (though it seems the gang now prefers Budweiser). 
 
 Regardless of the challenge, here's an old college try, though the only school the Furious gang graduated from was one of insanely hard knocks: After the events of Furious 7, which saw the departure of original Fast hero Brian O'Conner (the late Paul Walker), Diesel's Dom Toretto is savouring the good life, honeymooning with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) in Cuba and sharing some of the least-sexy postcoital scenes ever committed to film. (Diesel and Rodriguez bring their own distinct charms to the Furiousverse, but their romance is the most unbelievable element in an enterprise committed to implausibility.) 
 
 Thankfully, along comes the aptly named villain Cipher (Charlize Theron, oozing evil and sporting a repelling hairstyle to match, but with no real motivation beyond, um, being bad) to add some tension and sex appeal to the proceedings. Suddenly, Dom is coaxed into betraying those he holds most dear – his capital-F Family! – as well as his preference for white clothing (he's one fedora away here from being a literal black hat). From there, it's all a matter of getting from Point A to Point B in the quickest amount of time and with the most vehicular destruction as possible. It's a method of storytelling that ropes in faces familiar (Johnson's delightful government agent/Incredible Hulk stand-in), unexpected (Jason Statham's reformed villain), bewildering (a certain British Oscar-winner gets her hands dirty) and unwelcome (Scott Eastwood's ultra-bland junior G-man, filling in for when Kurt Russell evidently had better places to be). 
 
 The mechanics of it all fall apart upon even cursory inspection – these characters started off 16 years ago fencing electronics, and are now tasked with preventing a Third World War – but this is a movie defiantly proud of its senselessness. The Fate of the Furious isn't here to play by cinema's rules, or even the rules of a traditional studio tentpole – it's merely a very shiny, very attractive vessel designed to deliver the thinly drawn but charming characters we've come to care for, and scene after scene of you-can't-be-serious destruction. 
 
 This isn't intended as a knock, either. As the Furiousverse has expanded over the years, it's become increasingly self-aware of its crass appeal, its total and complete mania. It is one of the few franchises that's earned more critical acclaim as its sequels multiplied, and that's far from dumb luck. Diesel, his producers and his cannily cast band of ethnically diverse co-stars know that they're playing with some very expensive fire here – and the only way to ensure it won't burn out is to keep pouring on gallons and gallons of fuel. More knockout fights, more comically sized weapons, more magically resurrected characters, more blatant homo-eroticism (Johnson and Statham come this close to making out), more everything and anything. It's stupid, but it's the sort of stupid that comes bearing gifts, if you're smart enough to accept them. 
 
 Still – and with any film even pretending to concern itself with the passage of time, there's always a "still" – Diesel and company cannot outrun that nasty bit of destiny that the title promises. For every "hell yes" moment of action-film ecstasy, there's a weary flick at why this might not be so fun in a few years. After two hours' worth of mayhem for the eighth go-'round, the exhaustion lingers a bit longer than before – not a good sign when there are (at least) two more Furious films on the horizon. 
 
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 Also not helping matters is the absence of directorial mastermind Justin Lin, who left the series after part six, replaced for part seven by the able James Wan and now the merely passable F. Gary Gray. The youthful verve Lin delivered – such smoothly choreographed chase scenes, such perfectly staged moments of hand-to-hand combat – is gone, swapped for Gray's sometimes choppy and sometimes worse aesthetic that barely conceals the fact everyone's been in this game for some time. 
 
 If the fate of the Furious series is to grow somehow both wearier and dumber with age, then the eighth film is proof of a mission firmly accomplished. And there's no shame, Vin, in hanging it all up after a job well done. ||||| Universal Pictures 
 
 One of the pillars of the Fast and the Furious universe’s lore—and if you have not been keeping up with the franchise, you might be surprised at how much lore it’s accumulated—is the existence of “NOS,” short for nitrous oxide, which Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and his ever-expanding crew use to give themselves an extra boost of speed just when they need it most. They’re racing along, trailing their opponent by inches, unable to make up the distance as the finish line approaches, when they’ll hit a button, inject some NOS into their fuel stream, and cruise to a narrow but satisfying win. 
 
 The Fast and the Furious series hit the NOS button with 2011’s Fast Five, which transformed it from a string of movies about people who race cars into a globetrotting action franchise in which cars are occasionally—and increasingly less plausibly—involved. Bloomberg neatly documented as much in a statistical breakdown which showed the time spent on actual car racing dwindling to a measly 33 seconds in 2015’s Furious 7. The Fate of the Furious, the eighth movie in the series (yes, it really is spelled Fate instead of F8, but that is the film’s lone gesture of restraint), reverses that trend, opening with a lengthy race through the streets of Havana slickly directed by franchise newcomer F. Gary Gray (helming his first film since Straight Outta Compton). 
 
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 The sequence, shot in earthy, saturated colors, gives Gray a chance to train his camera on several voluptuous, barely covered rears, a necessity for a series that is to ass shots what water lilies were to Monet. But it also serves as a kind of subliminal reassurance to fans unsettled by the loss of Fast/Furious mainstay Paul Walker, who was killed in a car crash midway through the filming of Furious 7, that Walker’s death won’t cut the series off from its roots. 
 
 That reassurance lasts about five minutes, until Charlize Theron’s evil hacker Cipher crashes Dom’s Cuban honeymoon and blackmails him into turning against his comrades, a team that includes his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), longtime running buddies Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), and newish additions Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). The idea of Dom’s crew as a surrogate family has been hammered home with comical frequency—don’t do a game where you drink every time Diesel says the word family unless you have some activated charcoal near at hand—especially as the movies have swelled and strayed farther from reality. Their clunky sentimentality is what keeps the Furious movies grounded even as the need to craft bigger and more outlandish stunts has made them increasingly hostile to the nettlesome laws of physics. 
 
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 There’s a certain logic to the idea that Fate should put that idea of family to the ultimate test, forcing its most vocal proponent to betray his own oft-stated ideal. (The movie holds back for a while exactly what leverage Cipher has over Dom, but suffice it to say that it dovetails neatly with the same theme.) But separating Dom from the group also means the narrative has to run in several different directions at once, and there isn’t enough story to keep it going. Fate pares back the sprawling cast of its predecessors somewhat, but it also adds Scott Eastwood as a rule-following adjunct to Kurt Russell’s black-ops taskmaster and contrives to have Jason Statham’s Deckard, the previous movie’s main antagonist, jump the fence and start working with, if not for, the good guys. 
 
 Deckard’s shift of allegiances goes down especially rough for those who view the Furious movies as more than collection of action set pieces separated by filler scenes just long enough to let them catch up on their missed texts. (We’ll get to the set pieces shortly, but if the highlight reel is all you’re after, you won’t leave disappointed.) It was revealed at the end of the sixth movie that Deckard was responsible for the death of the crew’s beloved Han (Sung Kang), a character so popular that the series effectively turned three movies into prequels to 2006’s Tokyo Drift to bring him back from the dead. 
 
 It really is spelled Fate instead of F8, but that is the film’s lone gesture of restraint. 
 
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 The Fate of the Furious mumbles a few words about how Deckard and Hobbs are the only two people in the world who’ve ever managed to track Dom down and so they’re the best chance for finding him now, but the integration of a cold-blooded murderer into the crew’s ranks is accomplished without so much as a token demonstration that Deckard is inclined to change his spots. More Jason Statham in studio blockbusters is a welcome development: There’s a sequence near the end of Fate that involves Statham killing his way through a crowd of henchmen while toting an infant car seat that’s like the Crank 3 we’re unlikely to get. But in Fate, it comes at the cost of dynamiting whatever shred of credibility the series has left. 
 
 One can make the colorable claim that credibility matters little in a movie in which Vin Diesel drives a flaming car backwards through the middle of a city and an orange Lamborghini is chased across a Russian ice floe by a submarine. If the question with which you approach The Fate of the Furious is “Does it feature a sequence in which self-driving cars speed through the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers and smash onto the streets below like very expensive rain?” then yes, you are likely to leave fulfilled. But even within the world of the Furious movies, where vintage American muscle cars are sturdier than tanks and faster than jet planes, some of Fate’s stunts are difficult to embrace. (The only way to explain how Dom escapes after his car is punctured by five separate grappling hooks is that a wizard did it.) 
 
 Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club Join Slate’s Sam Adams and leading culture critics as they watch and review some of the best conspiracy thrillers of the past decades, from The Manchurian Candidate to Get Out. 
 
 It’s worst in the sequence where Hobbs and Deckard fight their way out of prison, with Johnson throwing bodies dozens of feet in the air and Statham springing off walls as if he’s been bitten by a radioactive spider. The moments where the two of them butt heads are some of Fate’s best; despite their relatively late arrival to the franchise, they’re the best at nailing the right balance of musclebound bluster and tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. But they feel like scenes from a different movie—or really, from any number of movies. 
 
 The Furious series has been headed in the direction of Bondsville for some time, and with the arrival of Theron’s Cipher, swathed in ratty blond hair extensions and intent on seizing control of the world’s nuclear arsenals, it pulls comfortably into a spot out front. But Theron seems strangely reluctant to have fun with the part, and given her athletic turns in Mad Max: Fury Road and the forthcoming Atomic Blonde, there’s something perverse about sticking her in a role where the only thing she does furiously is tap at a keyboard. ||||| “The Fate of the Furious” doesn’t need your stinkin’ laws. 
 
 Speed limits? Optional. Ditto, gravity. Only one unwritten commandment of silly action moviemaking — thou shalt not exceed two hours — goes unheeded. As usual with this unstoppable franchise — now on its eighth installment — it all works somehow. 
 
 It’s been 16 years since car-obsessed thief/mechanic Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) first revved an engine on-screen, and a lot has changed since then. Dom is finished with his criminal ways, and he’s lost his best friend (Paul Walker) to retirement. (Walker, who played Brian, died midway through filming the seventh movie.) But Dom’s still an acrobatic speed demon behind the wheel, and he wastes no time showing off. 
 
 On his honeymoon with his longtime love, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), in Cuba — which seems to be the capital of underbutt-revealing short-shorts — Dom winds up challenging the man with the fastest car in Havana to a race. Naturally, Dom wins by a hair, even though he’s driving a hastily souped-up jalopy. In a stunning act of diplomacy, Dom refuses to take the guy’s car keys. Newly earned respect is enough, he says. 
 
 
 
 “The Fate of the Furious” comes with illogical but gorgeously choreographed car chases, and Vin Diesel even flexes his acting muscles. But this franchise may have officially run out of gas. (Universal Pictures) 
 
 Such emotional maturity makes what follows all the more confounding: Dom abandons Letty after being recruited by the evil computer hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron), a new character who wears Metallica T-shirts and has long blond dreadlocks. But cultural appropriation is the least of her sins. In a sign that the “Furious” franchise is taking tips from Marvel, the sadistic supervillain seeks world domination. 
 
 Although Dom has perfectly noble reasons for joining forces with her — they’re right out of a soap opera — the character’s inner turmoil means that Diesel gets to flex his acting muscles for a change. That’s not always a good thing. In one scene, he cries pearl-size tears, inspiring less compassion than curiosity: Could there be a correlation between the size of his tear ducts and his biceps? 
 
 
 
 Dominic Torretto (Diesel) joins forces with evil computer hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron) in the film. (Universal Pictures) 
 
 But back to the action: Cipher must be stopped, and there’s only one group to do it. Enigmatic special agent Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell, clearly having fun) recruits Dom’s old crew, including Letty; former federal agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson); hilariously histrionic Roman (Tyrese Gibson); and computer nerds Tej and Ramsey (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Nathalie Emmanuel). With each movie, the crew gains a few allies. This time, it’s onetime villain Deckard (Jason Statham) and Mr. Nobody’s new rube of an underling (Scott Eastwood), who becomes an easy target for the team’s jokes. 
 
 Putting Statham and Johnson together is a particularly ingenious move. Both action stars have shown impressive comedic skills in recent years — Johnson in “Central Intelligence” and Statham in “Spy” — and their constant bickering is among the movie’s main pleasures. 
 
 
 
 Dwayne Johnson returns as Hobbs. (Matt Kennedy/Universal Pictures) 
 
 Nathalie Emmanuel returns as Ramsey. (Universal Pictures) 
 
 Of course, nobody comes to the “Furious” franchise looking for jokes. It’s all about action, which doesn’t disappoint. Here, self-driving cars rain down on city streets from a multistory parking garage; rubber bullets ricochet off Hobbs’s pulsating neck muscles; Deckard parkours out of a maximum-security prison. The pièce de résistance involves a formation of cars atop an ice field, trying to outrun a submarine. As usual, the chases are gorgeously choreographed — and utterly nonsensical. 
 
 This is the first “Furious” film for director F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”), who previously demonstrated his mastery of high-speed pursuits with the 2003 remake of “The Italian Job.” The movie drags at times, especially during a tense cyber-confrontation between Ramsey and Cipher, during which the camera cuts from one character to the other, rapidly tapping on their keyboards. 
 
 On top of the clunky dialogue and absurd plot twists, such moments suggest that the franchise — which already has two more installments planned — peaked three movies ago, with 2011’s “Fast Five.” Even so, “Fate” gives fans of the franchise exactly what they want, provided they can ditch logic as easily as the movie does.
– Once, there was a "family" of car enthusiasts working out of a dirty garage. Now, that family must stop an evil hacker who's enlisted one of their own in a plot for world domination. Oh, how things change. Here's what critics are saying about The Fate of the Furious, the eighth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise and certainly not the last: "If the fate of the Furious series is to grow somehow both wearier and dumber with age, then the eighth film is proof of a mission firmly accomplished," writes Barry Hertz at the Globe and Mail. Why, then, has he given the film three stars out of four? Because despite its unbelievability, it's "genuinely thrilling" with "more everything and anything. It's stupid, but it's the sort of stupid that comes bearing gifts," he says. Yes, the series is known for its ridiculous action scenes. But Sam Adams has had about enough. "It feels like the movies have gotten as big as they can get, and the gleeful absurdity that drove them is losing ground to the specter of obligation," he writes at Slate. The scenes featuring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, however, "are some of Fate's best." Stephanie Merry agrees "putting Statham and Johnson together is a particularly ingenious move" and "their constant bickering is among the movie's main pleasures." But the "clunky dialogue and absurd plot twists" suggest the franchise "peaked three movies ago," she writes at the Washington Post. At least the action "doesn't disappoint," which is all fans are likely to care about. If you're willing to throw logic out the window, you're in for "a wildly entertaining thrill ride that never lets its foot off the gas," despite a running time of over two hours, writes Adam Graham at Detroit News. He particularly applauds the "unquestionable levels of silliness" and notes director F. Gary Gray "has a great sense of rhythm and keeps things rolling."