Fate of the Furious (2017)

I much prefer to call this movie "8 Fast 8 Furious". 

I am a shameless fan of this terrible garbage franchise, but I think everyone who enjoys it is either completely without irony in their lives or is aware that it is terrible garbage. This is not a sophisticated movie, and this will not be a sophisticated review. Here are all of the things that were either very good or very bad about the eighth movie in a franchise that is no longer about street racing and is now about, apparently, stealing nuclear weaponry.

Let's tackle this movie, list style.

The good:

• Every scene containing Dwayne the Rock Johnson, particularly beating people up en masse
• They gave Jason Statham a lot more to do, and it was a lot of fun. The two should buddy comedy.
• Great action scenes
• Increasingly aware of its own ridiculousness - it pokes fun at itself, makes satisfying callbacks, and doesn't take itself too seriously
• Wonderfully and unapologetically unsubtle

The bad:

• Charlize Theron plays a villain and her character has truly atrocious dreadlocks
• Helen Mirren's accent - we all know she can do better than that so what was the deal there?
• There's an attempt to fill the Paul Walker shaped hole by adding Scott Eastwood to the team, and he must be the blandest and least personable screen presence in recent history
• Long sections of story the writers could not figure out and clearly just decided to skip over
• The withholding of character motivations and story elements often feels like it's done for the sake of it, and goes on for long enough that it's impossible to stay on the same level as a character
• The movie relies even more heavily than normal on Vin Diesel's acting ability and conveyance of emotion via his face, neither of which he is known for
• I have been watching these movies for so long that I am almost blind to the objectification of women in the franchise and that alone is disturbing to me, but their constant need to stay "loyal" to the fans results in a near tangible air of misogyny drifting out of the theatre. I want to be able to turn off my brain and enjoy cars exploding and it's so hard to do that when there are still unnamed characters with next to no lines of dialogue and whose skirts have literal cut outs over their ass cheeks. These movies are fun and diverse and endlessly silly, but my god, the women are relegated to the back every single time. They are trophies or pictures in lockets or hostages or sexy girls holding flags or sexy girls hacking. Being a fun movie doesn't make it an excuse. You don't get to be fun and then have your grossness completely ignored in the equation. Get your shit together.

After my screening of 8 Fast 8 Furious finished, I looked at the twenty-something man sitting next to me and saw tears streaming down his face. That's F8, I guess.

Rating: 5/10 - Mostly because The Rock is great and the action is satisfying. It’s not the strongest movie in the franchise, but it’s not the weakest. If you're tolerant with your movies about fast cars, you'll have a perfectly pleasant time with it.