Ten Statements About....THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (2017)

Yep...that's what it's all about....

“Why are they shooting at me?"
“I don't know. Maybe because you're in a orange Lamborghini..

1) It is such a pleasure to see Michelle Rodriguez smiling at points in this film, which I hope reminds people she’s quite beautiful, and it’s her pissed off expression that hides this fact.

2) Charlize Theron sure is having fun as the villain of the piece, deadpanning her lines and reveling in her ability to sow chaos.

3) I’m not very taken with director F. Gary Grey’s effort here.  He seems to rely at inopportune times on stylistic ticks popularized by previous entries in the series.  Every time he does a ramping moment or a slow-then-fast motion moment, it just reminds you of the earlier films without enhancing this one.

4) Look, I know her character makes sense in the world of The Fast and The Furious, but it still

What worries me is that Vin Diesel's evil face is the same
as his good face....

doesn’t stop me from going, “Who the Hell let Helen Mirren in this movie?”

5) After seeing this, I would watch a film where Jason Statham and a baby going around having adventures every damn day.

6) I’d also pay to watch Tyrese Gibson’s Roman being humiliated repeatedly.

7) The one regular who seems to suffer is Nathalie Emmanuel’s Ramsey.  She spends almost her entire screentime with her nose in a laptop clacking on the keys without any indication why.  And the return of the not-really-romantic triangle subplots between her, Roman and Ludacris’ Tej at the very end seems like an afterthought.

8) I appreciate how, as with the previous Fast films, the script manages to cram into it every possible character we’ve seen in these movies so far--even one who was in a persistent vegetative state when last we saw him.

The Rock has the reach, but The Stath is wiley....

9) I’m pleased by the fact that the Furious series continues to give us something that we may not have seen before--or at the very least something that we haven’t seen to that extent.  There are a couple of things like that in the movie, including something involving a submarine that is gobstopping.

10) I’m kind of hoping that this marks the end of the series.  It’s not that I am tiring of them, or that they aren’t keeping up the quality.  It’s just that the stakes in this one are so high that I don’t think they can top it unless they send the crew into outer space.

Overall...it’s a Fast and Furious film.  You should know if you will like it or not by now.  But for what it’s worth, I had fun.