Fast and the Furious 8: Fate of the Furious (2017)

Director: F. Gary Gray

Starring: Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson

When a mysterious woman seduces Dominic Toretto into the world of terrorism and a betrayal of those closest to him, the crew face trials that will test them as never before.

I must be honest, I wasn’t really interested in seeing this film. ‘Furious 6’ started pushing the boundaries of reality, while ‘Furious 7’ was just preposterous on every level! This franchise has come a long way, and is still going strong. The narration follows like a soap opera, so if you haven’t seen the previous films you can easily get lost in the characters. They constantly introduce new characters to the series, and by now there are so many characters that one tends to forget about some of them when they’re not on screen.

The film is a display of incredible action sequences we’ve never seen before. Not all of them (well, most of them) are not logical or even remotely practically possible, yet it was fun to watch. I also appreciated the fact they used practical effects for some of the action sequences (using real cars as opposed to CGI). Don’t get me wrong, they did use A LOT of CGI, as well. By now I’m able to easily spot the difference.

The film’s first hour bored me to death. It was also confusing and over-complicated. The typical Hollywood cliches, character traits and macho talk can be listed alphabetically. Off course Tyrese Gibson is annoying as ever as the film’s comic relief. This character doesn’t contribute anything to the film and might as well not be there anymore. His humor has overstayed its welcome in these films. I thought Charlize Theron was rather good as the antagonist, Cipher.

The film certainly does dish up a lot of preposterousness. Why did they have to destroy hundreds of cars and an entire city block just to stop the Minister of Defense? If Cipher and her henchman are so technologically advanced, surely they could have concocted a much better plan to stop the Minister? This scene was for effect only, but utterly ridiculous. And, in the beginning, Dom is sitting comfortably in his living room in one scene, and the next him and his team are in the middle of what appeared to be a war zone, with very little explanation whatsoever! It felt like the film skipped a couple of scenes…

Fortunately, the characters improved with development as the film progressed. So much so that I’ll forgive them for those annoying cliches during the first half. There’s a good twist of events, and an excellent action-packed finale. The film also features stunning slow motion photography. In general, this was far more enjoyable than ‘Furious 7’ (which I absolutely hated by the way).

‘Fate of the Furious’ earned more than $1.2 billion on a $250 million budget, officially making it the highest grossing film in the series.

Would I watch it again? Possibly.