If you think Helen Mirren signing up for the next installment of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise is a weird move, you haven’t paid enough attention to her career. Dame Helen’s résumé isn’t all Shakespeare, art-house flicks and royals: She knows how to get down and boogie.
Exhibit A and B: “RED” and “RED 2,” in which her character had a way with both machine guns and car, an expertise that should come in handy in “Fast 8.”
Her action skill set is just as good as future co-star Vin Diesel’s, minus the Popeye biceps and chrome dome: Unlocking handcuffs and combat? Check. Two-handed shooting in speeding vehicle? To quote Her Highness: “Abso-bloody-lutely.”
And it’s not like Mirren decided to unclench her classy butt cheeks in recent years: She’s always been willing to fully commit to the oddest projects with a refreshing lack of snobbery. You could tell as far back as 1969, when the 24-year-old actress was being set up as England’s answer to Brigitte Bardot in “Age of Consent.”
While Mirren’s career as a sex kitten didn’t take off, she’s always kept an open mind, and never more so than with 1979’s “Caligula,” a demented exercise in pseudo-political sex and violence spearheaded by Bob Guccione of “Penthouse” fame. In her DVD commentary, Mirren was wonderfully frank about having signed on for the money — her fee helped her buy her first house — but she also didn’t express any regret or shame. Judgmental she is not.
The following year, she played a policewoman named Alice Rage in “The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu,” the kind of un-PC action comedy that wouldn’t fly nowadays (hint: Peter Sellers played the title character).
Talk about one-two punch.
Mirren was more subuded in the 1990s and aughts, though she did play the iconic cop Jane Tennison on the “Prime Suspect” series. It was more of a thinking person’s show than an actioner but still, the occasional hot pursuit could happen.
By joining the “Fast 8” team, the star shows she hasn’t lost any of her punch. And that she has good taste, to boot — this is arguably the best action franchise going. Can you imagine her in a Marvel-verse spectacle? Shudder.