Critics Of "Fast and Furious 8: The Fate of the Furious"
Jim Judy
April 14, 2017
There's enough action-based mayhem to keep viewers engaged and entertained. (Full Content Review for Parents - Violence, Profanity, Revealing attire, etc. - also Available)
"The Fate of the Furious" begins and ends with adrenaline-spiking scenes - a drag race through Havana, an airplane brawl - that remind you why this gear-head franchise is still purring along. As for the two hours in between . . . not so much.
The action set pieces are several miles over the top... But what makes these sequences work is the bickering banter between Johnson, Statham, Chris Bridges, Tyrese Gibson and the rest of the mismatched cast.
If the fate of the Furious series is to grow somehow both wearier and dumber with age, then the eighth film is proof of a mission firmly accomplished. And there's no shame, Vin, in hanging it all up after a job well done.
Just when the Fast-and-the-Furious-on-Ice finale threatens to drag on past the point of action-setpiece endurance, director F. Gary Gray has the grace to send a supercar from heaven as an actual answer to prayer.
A very funny and fulfilling sequel, that is approaching in terms of features to the science fiction cinema in its superheroic side. [Full review in Spanish]
If you're not interested in seeing a fleet of cars get chased across a frozen lake by a Russian submarine, that's between you and your maker. As long as you are, [Fate] is a wildly entertaining thrill ride that never lets its foot off the gas.
It's about moments like the opening sequence where Dom is racing a car backwards and while on fire (and, umm, plenty of women in bikinis are watching).
A midsection sequence where Cipher taps into computers in vehicles and creates an army of CGI zombie cars might be the death of the franchise. When the cars are zombies, what part of The Fate Of The Furious truly feels alive?
So why is The Fate of the Furious an amusing step up on recent editions? Its ludicrousness has an amiability this time around that's more enjoyable than the mawkishness that dogged 2015's Fast & Furious 7.
Fun if you're a fan but all that's changed since the 2001 original is a few characters, more humor, bigger stunts, the death of Paul Walker and a longer run time.
Other characters return not only from the past but also from the dead, as is the custom in this series. This thing is like a daytime soap opera with car chases.
"The Fate of the Furious" begins and ends with adrenaline-spiking scenes - a drag race through Havana, an airplane brawl - that remind you why this gear-head franchise is still purring along. As for the two hours in between . . . not so much.
[It] will earn zillions of dollars during the first nanoseconds of its global opening this weekend, so who am I to call it soulless, graceless, witless, incoherent -- even for the franchise -- and, not incidentally, brain-numbingly long at 136 minutes?
Turbo charged and thoroughly mechanical, The Fate of the Furious is an empty-headed, essentially soulless popcorn film with modest aspirations in every regard but box office.
If the fate of the Furious series is to grow somehow both wearier and dumber with age, then the eighth film is proof of a mission firmly accomplished. And there's no shame, Vin, in hanging it all up after a job well done.
Stupid is not as easy as it looks. And just because the audience for stupid is reliable and vast, that doesn't mean we can't tell good stupid from bad.
If you're not interested in seeing a fleet of cars get chased across a frozen lake by a Russian submarine, that's between you and your maker. As long as you are, [Fate] is a wildly entertaining thrill ride that never lets its foot off the gas.
Autos cascade like a waterfall from the top of a parking garage; sometimes their on-board computers are cyber-jacked so that they besiege midtown Manhattan in an attack wave of shiny expensive plastic and chrome.
The Fate of the Furious tops its predecessors not in its action scenes, but by applying that familiar, reality-confounding aesthetic to its characters. The result tests the patience like nothing short of a Diesel crying scene.
Not only assures viewers there's plenty more levels of ludicrously entertaining levels to go, but asserts itself as a contender for best in the series.