The Fate of the Furious (2017)

	Also Known As: Fast & Furious 8
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: F. Gary Gray (The Negociator, The Italian job, Men in Black: International)
	Actors: Vin Diesel (Pitch Black, Riddick, xXx), Dwayne Johnson (Rampage, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar), Jason Statham (The Mechanic), Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road)
	Country: USA, J, CN
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 26.01.2020, Blu-ray, 40" TV screen.
Synopsis: While on holiday in Cuba, Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is a approached by a mysterious woman (Theron) who coerces him to work for her, betray his team and the whole world.
Review: It is now pretty obvious that for each of the new movies in the franchise, they have to come up with a solid way to justify the team banding back together to go on a suicide mission. And I find they do it pretty well, this time included. They found yet another motivation for the characters, something new which makes that since the forth movie Fast and Furious and the exit of the common drug lord, I find the antagonists to be somehow always different and with different motivations. This time the super-hacker played by Charlize Theron does seem redundant with the one in Furious 6, as are her motivations, but her uncompromising characters and especially how she manipulates the team is yet again new while fitting with the story we grew to know (spoiler highlight to read): she forces the team to band-up against Dom after kidnapping the son he had with Elena and that nobody knew of! I loved that revelation, making one of the team the bad guy, after repeatedly redeeming bad guys into heroes. The story after that is quite what you would expect with its lot of chases, close calls, family moments, all-types of cars and tanks fitting their driver, wonderful Car-Fu (I love this expression mentioned in Marcus' video on YouTube that I watched again), jokes by Tyrese... And an awesome scene with a come-back character: when the Shaw brothers enter the enemy's plane and Jason Statham's character rescues Dom's son in style. As more and more in those movies, logic is out the window and just a screenplay writing hindrance like the same Marcus says in his video. Impossible stunts, characters surviving anything, a sub-marine moving faster than a sports car... anything goes, but leaves the door open to never-seeen-before action scenes like the fleet of drone cars driving in unison. Besides this nice story and stunts, I found the movie more talkative than the others, maybe the mark of its director not know for masterpieces. The architect of the franchise's rise, director Justin Lin, will be back for the ninth movie (you can already watch the exciting trailer). I still need to watch the 2019 spin-off Hobbs & Shaw but I am otherwise ready to appreciate this next installment on a cinema screen in May. The kind of jaw-dropping scenes and revelations I mentioned above make it hard to rate the movie. Most of the movie is a 5/10 but some moments are 8/10, so after comparing it to the other movies in the franchise as well I settled for 6/10.
Rating: 6 /10