The Fate of the Furious (2017) - Review

April 22, 2026

The Fate of the Furious opens with Dom racing a stranger through Havana's streets in a burning car, a sequence that establishes his recklessness and his code in equal measure. F. Gary Gray's 2017 film then immediately complicates both: Dom is blackmailed into betraying his family, and the series' most reliable constant becomes its central source of tension.

At a Glance

Director: F. Gary Gray
Runtime: 136 minutes
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Scott Eastwood
Release: 2017
Critics Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, ambitious but uneven)
Audience Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, entertaining despite its limitations)

Plot

Dom is blackmailed by the cyberterrorist Cipher into betraying his family and working against them, while Hobbs and the crew, joined by a released Deckard Shaw, attempt to stop Cipher's plan to commandeer a nuclear submarine. The rogue Dom premise is the picture's most interesting concept, and the revelation of Cipher's leverage over Dom is the film's most emotionally significant moment. The submarine chase is the entry's most spectacular set piece, a demonstration of action filmmaking at physical scale that gives the film its most purely kinetic passage. The eventual revelation of Dom's true motivation is the picture's most satisfying resolution, though the script takes longer to get there than the premise warrants.

Characters

Diesel's Dom is given the series' most complex material since the original, a character whose apparent betrayal of his family is the picture's most acutely tense dimension and whose eventual revelation is its most satisfying payoff. Charlize Theron's Cipher is the series' most intellectually formidable villain, a cyberterrorist of personal menace and strategic intelligence whose manipulation of Dom gives the film its most credible threat. Theron plays the character with a cold authority that makes Cipher the series' most fully realised female antagonist. Johnson's Hobbs and Statham's Shaw are given their most purely entertaining dynamic, a partnership of comic energy and physical capability that is the picture's most enjoyable element and that would prove sufficiently compelling to generate its own spinoff. Rodriguez's Letty is given her most substantial material since her return, a character whose loyalty to Dom is tested with enough conviction to make her eventual faith in him feel earned.

Meaning / Themes

At its core, the film is about family and obligation, about Dom's loyalty to his crew and his obligation to protect his son, a meditation on the nature of family and the lengths to which a parent will go to protect their child that gives the series' central value its most personally consequential expression. The rogue Dom premise also raises a question the series rarely asks directly: what happens when the family's most reliable member can no longer be trusted, and what does loyalty demand of those left behind?

Direction

Gray's direction is technically proficient and spatially clear, with a command of the action sequences at scale and a feel for developing the series' central relationships in the absence of its most significant character. The submarine chase is the film's most visually striking directorial passage, its frozen-tundra geography giving the sequence a visual distinctiveness that the more generically staged urban action scenes do not match. Gray's handling of the Dom-Cipher scenes is the film's most important directorial achievement: the scenes work because Gray keeps them intimate and still, resisting the temptation to inflate them with the same kinetic energy as the action sequences. Gray pitches the film at a register of spectacular entertainment and genuine tension, with a tonal ambition that makes it a more accomplished entry than a surface reading of its action sequences would indicate. The picture is at its most rewarding in the sequences where Dom's apparent betrayal is most directly felt by the crew, and at its least convincing when the more generic action sequences take precedence over the more interesting character material. The Hobbs-Shaw dynamic provides the film's most consistent tonal pleasure, a comic energy that keeps the picture engaging even in its more formulaic passages. The film was a major commercial success on its release, becoming one of the highest-grossing films in cinema history. Theron's Cipher is now widely regarded as the series' most intellectually formidable villain, and the Hobbs-Shaw dynamic is recognised as the creative foundation for the spinoff that followed.

Final Verdict: The series' most structurally daring post-Walker entry. Dom's apparent betrayal gives the picture a tension the more straightforwardly spectacular entries could not generate, Theron's Cipher is the series' most cold-blooded villain, and the Hobbs-Shaw dynamic gives the film its most purely entertaining passages. The Fate of the Furious is a more rewarding film than its detractors allow, and a less complete one than its premise promised.