'The Fate of the Furious' Review

Image from Comic Book Movie

By PJ Bonello

     The Fate of the Furious is directed by F. Gary Gray and it is the eighth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise. The movie stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel and Kurt Russell all reprising their roles from the previous films with Scott Eastwood and Charlize Theron joining the franchise. The film takes place after the events of Furious 7 and follows the crew as they try to stop Cipher (Charlize Theron), a criminal mastermind and cyberterrorist, from basically starting World War III. But this proves to be harder than usual as Dom goes rogue on his family. The team must do everything they can to prevent Cipher from completing her master plan while also trying to bring Dom back to their side. Dom has a past with Cipher that runs deeper and darker than we could’ve even imagined and gives “family” a whole new meaning.

            This movie was everything you expected and wanted a Fast and Furious movie to be. It had tons of action, many comedic moments, and a lot of Vin Diesel mumbling sentences. Let’s start with the action. Out of all the Fast and Furious movies, this had the best action out of all of them, by far. It’s obvious that eight films in, the Fast franchise had to continue to up the ante and they did that with this installment. With all Fast and Furious movies, most of the action sequences are very unbelievable, and this is no exception. The scene with the submarine is unbelievable, but it’s very intense and very fun to see with your own eyes. But hands down the best action scene in the whole movie would have to be when The Rock is in the jail. If you didn’t think The Rock was a badass prior to this movie, this scene will change your mind in a hurry. At one point, the most he hits a security guard with a Rock Bottom onto a steel railing. Jason Statham was also really entertaining in this scene, and in the whole movie if were being honest. Side note, Jason Statham is also a badass dude. 

            As with many of the Fast and Furious movies, it has its comedic moments with Tyrese Gibson being the comedic relief. While he has his moments where he’s very funny, after a while it gets to be way too much and he beats you over the head with corny one-liners. For example, the crew will be in an intense action scene and every two minutes or so, the camera will cut to Tyrese as he spits out a one liner or yells something unnecessary. After that happens a few times, you wish you could just mute the movie. But other than that, all the other characters have their moments where they are very provide humor to counteract the over-the-top action.

            Charlize Theron shines as the villain in this movie. She played the role well as you really felt hatred towards her the whole movie. Scott Eastwood joined the franchise as Eric who is the new right hand man to Kurt Russell’s character. It felt like he was there to just take up space with the absence of Paul Walker. Speaking of Walker, going into this movie I was very curious as to how they would address the obvious absence of Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster but they managed to explain their absence in a clear and concise story.    

            All in all, this is a very fun movie. In terms of cinematic brilliance, it doesn’t hold a candle to a movie like Shawshank Redemption but, if you’re a fan of the other movies, like myself, and a fan of cool action movies, you’ll definitely enjoy this movie. If you are a person who likes their movies to be realistic and scientifically accurate, then I wouldn’t recommend this movie. Fast Five is still the best movie in the franchise and Furious 7 has the best ending but The Fate of the Furious had the best action to me and that made the movie all the more fun.

7.7