The Fate of the Furious Review
Director: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto), Dwayne Johnson (Luke Hobbs), Jason Statham (Deckard Shaw), Michelle Rodriguez (Letty Ortiz), Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce), Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges (Tej Parker), Scott Eastwood (Eric Reisner), Nathalie Emmanuel (Ramsey), Kurt Russell (Frank Petty), Charlize Theron (Cipher)
As the eighth film in the Fast and the Furious series, this movie picks up shortly after the previous film with Dom and Letty on their honeymoon in Havana Cuba. Meanwhile, Dom comes across a beautiful cyberterrorist who reveals she’s holding his ex (Elena) captive. As a result, she persuades him to turn against his family and go rogue. Meanwhile, Dom and his team are recruited by Hobbs to help steal an EMP in Berlin. The betrayal comes in to play after a successful mission. And this leaves Dom’s old team to track him down Deckard Shaw recruited to help (much to the chagrin of everyone).
Overall, this was an enjoyable popcorn film. Even though it’s not as good as Straight Outa Compton, but I could still see how talented Gray is as a filmmaker. This film possesses some truly gorgeous cinematography. Also, the acting of Vin Diesel needs to be singled out because he turned in an exceptional performance for this type of movie—as did Charlize Theron but that’s to be excepted from her. However, the best performance in the movie is easily the performance of the uncredited Helen Mirren. She’s only in two scenes, but she steals them both.
Though this could not completely save the movie. Due to the off-screen feud between Diesel and Johnson, the crew avoided putting them on screen together as much as possible. As a result, the movie lost a lot of dramatic potential. In addition, the film features two of the ridiculous action sequences I’ve seen. Unfortunately, these action scenes are the two big chase sequences (i.e. the “bread and butter” of the franchise). Funny enough, the fight scenes are pretty good in their own right.
In the end, I enjoyed this movie for what it is. Like I said, it was an enjoyable popcorn film. But it is probably one of the weakest movies in the series.