With the eighth film in the Fast and the Furious franchise, the story continues its trajectory into super heroics and ridiculous circumstance. Some might be wondering how Paul Walker‘s absence affected the latest film, or how Vin Diesel‘s turn as the villain plays into the overall picture.
Each entry in the series has taken the gang of highjackers into greater stakes, decorated with glorious, action-filled set pieces and endearing characters, reminding audiences how fun movies can be.
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But close does the latest entry veer into ‘jumping-the-shark’ territory? Is Charlize Theron a compelling villain? And does Dominic Toretto’s betrayal register is a believable plot point?
Now that The Fate Of The Furious is less than a week away from hitting movie theaters across the country, the press embargo on reviews have lifted and we’re able to glean what details we can from the various trades’ different write ups of the film.
And while some might expect either a movie gone off the rails or even a franchise soaring to glorious new heights, the result is—as usual—somewhere in the middle. The Fate of the Furious doesn’t seem to be the worst film in the franchise, but it’s not purported to be the best either.
Quite simply, it seems that it just is. And that’s par for the course for a Fast and Furious film.
Check out what the critics are saying about the film on the following pages, and gear up for the movie’s release this Friday, April 14.
Owen Gleiberman
Variety
You’d think that merging all those elements would make “The Fate of the Furious” a bit of an overcooked stew. But the director, F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”), who has shown a propensity for action going back to “Set It Off” and “The Italian Job,” now proves that he’s a high-flying ballistic wizard at it.
“The Fate of the Furious” is nothing more than pulp done smart, but scene for scene it’s elegant rather than bombastic, and it packs a heady escapist wallop. The fact that it’s the first film in the series to have been made after the death of Paul Walker (and the first not to feature him since “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” in 2006) only gives fans that much more of a reason to rally around it.
Jim Vejvoda
IGN
The Fate of the Furious is as ridiculously entertaining as you might expect. It’s certainly better than its trailers—which came across more like parodies of a Fast and Furious movie—suggested. Indeed, no eighth movie in any franchise has any right to be as fun or effective as Fate manages to be…
Director F. Gary Gray’s movie, like a wrestling narrative, is built around Face-Heel Turns and Heel-Face Turns. These redemptions will also allow for some refreshing of the ranks in the inevitable ninth and tenth films.
John DeFore
Hollywood Reporter
Is it bloated? Damn straight. And even at well over two hours, Fate can barely find anything worth doing for Russell, a onetime onscreen badass who here functions as a sunglass-wearing expository device. The script actually has him say at one point that he feels obligated to “check in on you from time to time.” The words “…so I can earn this easy paycheck,” presumably, were left on the cutting room floor…
“What this series needs is more Tyrese,” you might say to yourself during the pic’s middle hour or so. But then you see the actor being pulled around a frozen Russian lake, screaming in panic as he clings to the ripped-off door of an orange Lamborghini, and you say, “this was not what I meant by ‘more Tyrese.’”
Scott Mendelson
Forbes
Is it entertaining? Sure. Is it consistent with the last film? Absolutely not. And for a franchise that prizes itself for an almost Saw-like devotion to continuity, it’s a little odd how much this one requires you to either forget what you know or ignore the inherent drama of what came before…
The film is the first one in over a decade to feel narratively unnecessary. The weird continuity, which put Tokyo Drift way into the future, gave the next three films something of a goal and an end. But with the current continuity wrapped up, and many core characters killed off or written out, this eighth film can’t shake the feeling that it only exists because the last film made $1.5 billion worldwide. The whole thing has a “going through the motions” feeling hurts a movie that lacks the sizzle and pop of the prior three films.
Dan Callahan
The Wrap
The title of this new entry is faintly ridiculous. (Could “The Flame and the Flesh of the Furious” be next?) And it begs the question: is the fate of the “Furious” series inexorably tied to bigger productions, longer running times, and larger stars? The plots of these films have never been too strong or too urgent, and the sometimes-soapy plotlines have a way of disappearing into action scenes that are more or less coherent, depending on who is directing the picture. There aren’t too many modern movies that have used amnesia as a plot device, but the “Furious” series has no shame about things like that.
Fate of the Furious
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Now that Dom and Letty are on their honeymoon and Brian and Mia have retired from the game — and the rest of the crew has been exonerated — the globetrotting team has found a semblance of a normal life. But when a mysterious woman (Charlize Theron) seduces Dom into the world of crime he can’t seem to escape and a betrayal of those closest to him, they will face trials that will test them as never before.
From the shores of Cuba and the streets of New York City to the icy plains off the arctic Barents Sea, our elite force will crisscross the globe to stop an anarchist from unleashing chaos on the world’s stage…and to bring home the man who made them a family.
For The Fate of the Furious, Vin Diesel is joined by a returning all-star cast that includes Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky and Kurt Russell. In addition to Theron, the series welcomes newcomers Scott Eastwood and Oscar winner Helen Mirren. The film is directed by F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) and produced by returning producers Neal H. Moritz, Michael Fottrell and Diesel.
