Review of The Fate of the Furious (2017) by Wayne K — 01 Sep 2017

Yes, the Fast & Furious franchise is still going. By the 8th film you'll know which camp you fit into, be it the 'Fast & Furious films are just mindless fun, stop complaining and enjoy them' camp, or the 'The Fast & Furious films are so far beyond ironically amusing that they might actually be eroding the concept of entertainment' camp.

As you'd imagine, I fit firmly into the latter. It's an awful film. Awfully directed, awfully editing, awfully written and awfully predictable. It has the odd fun action scene, but it labours under the delusion that it's a profound piece of work making grand statements on terrorism, nuclear war and the importance of family, but when you're 8 films into a series and you're still doing the same nonsense over and over and over with the same rote formula, same plot twists you can see coming a mile way and what looks like the same street racing scene spliced into every single film, what else are we supposed to get out of it? This film could be made by chopping up the last few instalments and stitching them together in no particular order, they're that similar.

It's downright infuriating at times, with stormtrooper henchmen, unkillable heroes, a great actress wasted on a villain role we've seen a million times before, and a series of actions scenes that set out only to defy the laws of physics, logic and probability.

This is a franchise that needs to die and die fast, but with the kind of revenue it rakes in every single time, I fear we haven't seen the last of this lunk-headed, money-spewing behemoth.