Fast and Furious 8: A review
There’ll be a lot of spoilers here, maybe not much, but read at your own risk
Hi Universal. Kachi here. I don’t want to ask for much, but would you guys discontinue the Fast and Furious franchise? Please?
Got around to seeing the movie this weekend. I laughed when I had to, deduced some stuff on screen before they played out, and enjoyed the sequence with Deckard Shaw in the final third. Besides that, meh. The movie pretty much felt formulaic, and the twist that was in play for the most part didn’t really pack much of a punch. There was a really emotional scene with Torreto, Cipher, and Elena that I liked though.
So let’s start with some of my gripes with the movie
Ramsey
Remember the lovely hacker from the last installment? The one that knocked the air out of Taj and Roman when they were in Dubai? Yeah, that one Game of Thrones enthusiasts might know her by Missandei. Well, I felt her character was poorly written. Minus the fact that she acts as an opponent to Cipher (albeit a weaker one), she doesn’t really do much, doesn’t get more lines. She should have been given more to do. Gal Galdot’s Gisele was a much more active member of the team than she was.
Retconning Stuff
Universal retconned a lot of stuff, like a lot of stuff, that makes you think about what really mattered during the last two movies. Seriously, when they started retconning, I started getting confused. There’s a lot of fun stuff they could have done if they hadn’t started retconning stuff, one of which I was really looking forward to. Talking about the retcons would probably spoil the movie more than I want it to be, so I’ll avoid it, but I’m looking at you, Universal.
Formulaic
Didn’t feel anything new watching this. Sure, they had some really cool sequences, but the story didn’t really appeal to me. It didn’t feel as cohesive as some of the previous installments. Felt a bit weaker than the last 4 installments.
The Big Bad
The only thing Cipher has on Owen Shaw is that she’s better at evading authorities by a long shot. Besides that Owen and Deckard Shaw were more terrifying as villains than Cipher was in the movie. She has some really mad tricks that she employed during the course of the movie though. But it looked like she was going through too much stress to make herself seem convincingly bad. We know what her endgame is, but we don’t know what really motivates her. She wants to keep countries in check, but we don’t know how they hurt her or what specifically happened that set her down on her path. They could have done a lot more with Cipher than what I saw in the movie. With Owen, and then Deckard, we don’t get any of that. They’re both terrifying from the get-go. The only time she gets hands-on is when they break into Nowhere, and she felt a bit scary then, especially when she comes face to face with Deckard.
That said, I did like some parts of the movie. Here they are:
Deckard Shaw’s sequence in the final third
That sequence was terrific. Enough said. You should see it for yourself
Helen Mirren’s Character
Even if she’s not in a lot of scenes, her character is one of the better parts of the movie.
Universal already has plans for a 9th installment. If they’re to carry on with it, a lot of things have to change. Give us something fresh, and different. If you want to keep people hooked to the Fast and Furious franchise, shake things up a little. Enough said.
Other gripes with the movie
- How does a stealth plane carry that many men
- How do said men get their butts whooped by just one man
- The plane seemed to only have two pilots. How did they cope without rotations
