The day you race a flaming car through the streets of Havana would be the most intense day of your life. For Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto? It’s Tuesday. It’s a brilliant demonstration of how bonkers the franchise has gotten that this new clip from The Fate of the Furious is probably one of the more sedate scenes from the movie.
After all, there’s only two cars in the race, only one of them is on fire and the characters appear to be competing in a genuine street race, rather than some covert ops, high concept hijinks. I guess if the film is apparently going to end up in some crazy chase between the world’s greatest supercars and a straight up nuclear submarine, you have to start small (at least by the standards of Fast and Furious).
Still, this is our first extended look at how director F. Gary Gray is approaching shooting in Havana, which might be one of the few international cities the family/gang hasn’t blown into smithereens in a whirlwind of gasoline-fuelled insanity. From the looks of this, he’s got the crazy toybox kineticity of the series down – with cars appearing to run on Mario Kart physics.
Also, I can’t help but love a clip in which Vin Diesel reacts to his entire car catching fire and taking a faceful of flames with the same vague annoyance one might when seeing a pigeon crap on their windscreen. We all know what to expect from The Fate of the Furious. We all know it’ll be balls to the wall brilliant, and I hope it never loses momentum.