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Fast and Furious 8: Definitely not fate

The film had the biggest global opening in history, making $500 million in two days. (Courtesy of Universal Pictures)

Owen Johnson
Connector Staff

The plot line for “Fate of the Furious” is pretty straight forward: Dom (Vin Diesel) is forced to betray his team and work with a terrorist known as Cipher (Charlize Theron). There are no hidden character agendas, no plot twists and the audience can call how most aspects of the movie are going to turn out.

While the predictability and generic nature of the plot is not a huge issue, it is only made worse by the appearance of several plot holes courtesy of brilliant terrorist mastermind Cipher suddenly acting like an idiot so that Dom can scheme behind her back.

This movie, and the whole franchise for that matter, is superficial entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with that. That being said, there has to be something to latch on to. This movie tries to do that, but it fails.

The best way to have something to latch on to is with the characters. A bad or dumb plot line can, at the very least, be tolerated if the characters in the plot line are well written and likable, but there is none of that here. These characters are supposed to be a family, but if one were to come into “Fate of the Furious” without any knowledge of the series, the only way one would know is because they say family at least 15 times.

They talk at each other instead of with each other and there is no chemistry amongst them. Even Dom’s reason for helping Cipher does not work because the reason why he is helping her does not justify what he is doing for her.

It is important to note that the people most at fault for this are the director and the screenwriter, not the actors. Every actor, whether they are likeable or not, did their job to the best of their abilities and did what they were told to do. These actors had inappropriate orders on how to deliver certain lines and act, while forced to speak dialogue that was trying too hard to be either funny or emotional.

With a plot line that has plot holes and no investable characters or motivations, the only thing that the movie has left to offer is the action. This movie does have some pretty good ideas for action scenes that would have been a lot of fun and exciting if there was any reason to care about the characters in the scenes. Since there is nothing like that, it all equates to a bunch of cars getting tossed around and exploding on screen.

For anyone who has seen a “Fast and the Furious” movie or knows the basics of the franchise, this movie is exactly what they would expect. If one loves these movies, they will probably enjoy this one. If not, do not bother giving it a chance.

Final Grade: C-

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