"The Fate of the Furious" Movie Review

The Fate of the Furious is the whopping eighth film in the Fast & Furious franchise. They have certainly come a long way from being common street racers. Now they are in the big leagues, fighting potentially world-changing battles against shadow organizations. Each film has gradually gotten better than the last and, as far as story and action go, this film certainly tops the past 7 films but there's an emptiness that'll never be filled now since the tragic death of Paul Walker. But even though he's no longer physically in the films, he is still there in spirit. Vin, Tyrese, Ludacris, and Michelle all honor Paul in some way during the film and that's one thing I appreciated most about this addition.

Fate opens with Dom and Letty on their honeymoon in Cuba. The tradition of an opening race continues as Dom races a glorified repo man for pink slips. The race gets hairy real fast and I have to admit that I was impressed with the execution of this scene. As the film progresses, we meet our main antagonist Cipher (played by Charlize Theron) who has something rather crucial on Dom and she will do what she has to do in order to get him to do her dirty work for her. Dom is forced to turn his back on his family and his family is forced to partner up with a former foe in order to stop him and Cipher both.

This film was mostly perfect. There were tons of jaw-dropping action scenes, plenty of humor, and bucketfuls of emotion. Charlize was downright diabolical as Cipher. I almost forgot how incredible she was as a villainess. She's the type of person you want to hate but you just can't because you're honestly afraid of what she'll do if you did. Everyone's acting improves with each film and this one shows just how broken Dom, Letty, and Roman really are, and a lot of that stems from pain off-set. Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Tyrese Gibson were all very close with Paul Walker and they all seemed to channel their grief into their performances which gave us some incredibly powerful scenes. The only problem with the film was Ramsey, who is by far the most useless character of all time. She's just there to be eye candy and take credit when Tej comes up with a brilliant plan. She is of no use and honestly gets in the way most of the time. For that reason I have to deduct a little. It's literally her fault this film didn't get a perfect score. I give it a total of 3.5 out of 4.