So, The Fate of the Furious is the 8th movie in this series of car racing/theft/spy/whatever flicks. And like the last three or four of them, it largely abandons whatever the series started as and goes with automotive super-spy / heist movie over-the-top bananas action. And, for what it is, this is another good entry in the series.
In this one, Vin Diesel betrays his family and goes rogue… though how a rogue can go rogue is questionable. Anyway, he’s now working for super hacker Charlize Theron, a hacker so scary even Anonymous stays away from her (). The remaining crew have to work with returning mysterious spook Kurt Russel and newcomer wooden plank (I mean Scott Eastwood) to figure out how to stop them. It seems they have stolen the God’s Eye (surprise reference to the previous movie) and have their eyes on some nuclear launch codes. .
The crew is made up of The Rock (doing some insanely improbably but incredibly cool fight scenes), Michelle Rodriguez (who has more story and presence than ever before), Ludacris (hacker!), Nathalie Emmanueal (Missendei from Game of Thrones… and hacker!), Tyrese (still looking for something to do), and Jason Statham (irredeemable villain from the last movie, inexplicably redeemed).
Charlize Theron doesn’t get to do a lot besides sit in a command center and HACK! She only interacts with two cast-members and maybe she was only available for a couple weeks of filming. That said, when she was allowed to give villain speeches, she was pretty good. When not doing unnecessary expository plot reminder dialog, she is given some good, smart (for this series) evil dialog. And odds are good she’ll be back for another movie.
It’s been said by many that the series has heart when it tries to be about family… and family is uttered a lot here. There’s also a deeper plot about family that actually allows Vin Diesel to do some reasonably creditable acting (even if that fat tear on his face was probably from an eye-dropper). Some actors get the usual short stick (Tyrese and Ludacris, as usual) and the Rock is just here to flex his muscles and deliver one-liners but he does it so well (he also gets to do a Maori war-dance with a gang of tween soccer girls which was fun).
And then there’s the question of Paul Walker – dead in real life, headed off into the sunset in the previous movie. The movie references him a couple times and it feels like he should be dead in the series. The movie does lack the camaraderie between him and Diesel since there’s no bro-male-bonding relationship without him. The Rock and Statham trade insults but its not quite the same and Diesel is practically in a separate movie. The series needs to find that type of relationship again or the “Family” stuff will start to wear thin.
Now the biggest problem with this movie is the action. It’s still goofy and hyperbolic which is fine. That’s what the series knowingly goes for and none of its bad and some of its pretty inventive. Or would have been if every major action beat wasn’t already shown in the trailers. There are zero surprises in the big action set pieces. And when I say “beat”, I mean every cool image or shot has already been given away. To be fair, they did that in the earlier movies but they were more spectacularly over-the-top. The big chase scene here never really felt like the final big showstopper… to the point I was surprised the credit rolled. It’s a bit of a let-down in a series that usually goes all-out… or maybe MORE ALL OUT (because a cars vs. sub action scene kind of is all out, lower-case).
That said, there are still some actual surprises in the movie – the trailers only ruined the big vehicular action scenes. There are some fun cameos and Statham gets a slam-bang fist fight sequence that actually cool… and cute in a nicely surprising way (lots of laughs in the theater).
So, yeah, this is a perfectly cromulent entry into this series. It’s about as good as the past three or four, hurt by the trailers and the somewhat less bombastic action… and the team works well but needs some rebuilding. If you don’t like anything in this big dumb series, then this is not for you. If you like this big dumb series (ironically or otherwise), this is a perfectly good action flick.
Score: 82