You can judge the quality of each successive instalment of the petrolhead Fast & Furious franchise by its opening action sequence. Here, the action revs up with a car chase around the streets of Havana. One of the first Hollywood movies to shoot in Cuba, F&F8 effectively uses one of the most photogenic cities on Earth as a display cabinet for vintage hotrods and buttocks. The race is between a turbo-boosted Cuban loan shark and Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) in a disintegrating clown car. Powered by distilled testosterone alone, Dom wins the race, driving backwards, consumed in a fireball, without brakes. The writing is scorched into the tarmac: this episode is aiming for new levels of high-octane silliness.
There is no shortage of muscle battling for alpha-male supremacy. In Vin Diesel, Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson, the film has three of the shiniest, baldest, most artificially bronzed men in Hollywood. When they start to butt heads, it’s like watching a human conker game. Of the three, it’s Statham who swaggers away with the movie, thanks to an audacious fight sequence accessorised with a gurgling baby in a travel seat and a cameo from British grand dame Helen Mirren as his tea-swilling mum.
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