“The Fate of the Furious” is the eighth installment in the widely popular “Fast and Furious” franchise, hehe, wow, EIGHT of these films exist. Anyway, this film stars Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, and Charlize Theron who you may know from films like “Hancock,” “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” “Prometheus,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” This film is about Dom’s turn to terrorism, he teams up with Cipher, played by the recently mentioned Charlize Theron, and his “family” is betrayed by this, so now they have to go up against Dom and Cipher.

The “Fast and Furious” franchise, in my opinion, is probably one of the most interesting franchises I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how many people see it the way I do, but I do know how people mainly see this franchise as a group of popcorn movies, which in my book is a good way of describing it, but the weird thing about this franchise from my personal perspective, is that it is about family or companionship, which is something that I noticed A LOT in this film by the way, and yet at the same time, it’s almost like pornography that is appropriate for people under the age of 18. By that I mean it tries to make girls come off as eye candy in every single film. I mean, seriously! This is a franchise that tried to literally make a girl a prize, and I say that in POSSIBLE EXAGGERATION because this is an actual line stated by the character of Cindy from “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” “Winner gets… me.” I’m not kidding, there’s a scene where a street race is about to go down and a girl offers herself, as a prize. By the way, there’s likely to be a reason they cast the girl who played Cindy, maybe she’s good at acting, maybe she has had some experience– aw who am I kidding, she’s f*cking hot!

I mean, I don’t have a problem with hot girls being cast in films like this, in fact, I’d rather see that in this as opposed to something such as, well, I don’t know, let’s say “Saving Private Ryan.” Another weird thing about this franchise in my opinion is that a lot of its sequels are seemingly much more well received as opposed to its older films, at least from what I’m getting on IMDb, this film is no exception to that. As far as the movie goes as a whole, this is once again what you’d probably expect out of a “Fast and Furious” film. You get tons of action, some of it is absurd yet fun, you get hot girls, one-liners left and right, and something related to companionship or family in here too. The only thing missing, is Paul Walker, RIP by the way. Also, without spoiling anything, the movie actually tries to pay respect to Paul, if you watch the film you’ll see what I mean.

One thing I want to talk about when it comes to this movie is the action, if you ask me what my favorite movies in this franchise are when it comes to action, I’d probably respond back with 5 and 7. Is this movie as good as those when it comes to action? Personally, no. It’s still good in this movie though, there was a very entertaining climax and I also love the prison break scene. In all honesty, that scene may be one of the most choreographed action sequences I’ve ever watched but it’s all the better for it! The scene had a funky music choice too.

Let’s talk about Dominic Toretto in this movie. As mentioned before, everyone in this film is going up against Dom because he turned his back on his pals. When Dominic actually was with Charlize Theron’s character in this movie, a character whom I’ll discuss in a second, I got really invested based on some choices he was given, these are choices I won’t bring up for the sake of not spoiling anything, but nevertheless they’re there and at one point it actually made the movie more emotionally charging, which actually kind of surprised me considering this is a “Fast and Furious” film, I don’t have any complaints about it personally but I thought I’d deliver that to the table.

As mentioned recently, I said I was gonna bring up Charlize Theron’s character, so keeping that in mind, let’s talk about Charlize Theron’s character. First off, I never really thought this to myself, but this character has some of the weirdest hair I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying it’s bad or anything, it’s just, weird, I don’t know. Another thing I noticed is that while Charlize Theron isn’t exactly giving a bad performance, there’s probably a reason why she was cast in this movie, and no, not because she’s hot, I mean, if you want my two cents, she’s rather good looking, but still, I wouldn’t say she was cast for that reason. From my mind, I think she was cast for this role mainly because it’s similar to some other roles she has done, a lot of movies I see Charlize Theron in she always seems to play either some strong character, or some strong character that doesn’t really seem to take much nonsense from anyone. I’ve seen that in “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” “Hancock,” even “Kubo and the Two Strings,” which is actually an animated film. Also, if you haven’t seen “Kubo and the Two Strings,” see it as soon as possible because it is one of the best animations I’ve ever seen, and if you have kids, make sure they watch it too because chances are they’ll like it.

I mentioned recently that one of my favorite action scenes in the film is the prison break scene. Speaking of prison, two of this movie’s characters are in prison together, Luke Hobbs (played by Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (played by Jason Statham). One of my favorite parts of the film is the banter between the two characters going back and forth on how they’re gonna beat each other up. This goes on for a good chunk of the movie and I love it.

In the end, while this isn’t my favorite “Fast and Furious” film, it certainly isn’t a bad one, certainly not as bad as “Tokyo Drift,” that was awful, and it’s not because of that girl who offered herself as a prize, I just wasn’t all that invested in the film or anything. This is what you would probably expect from a “Fast and Furious” film, which is a couple hours worth of entertainment that while somewhat disposable and kind of absurd, is still fun to watch. I’m gonna give “The Fate of the Furious” a 7/10. Thanks for reading this review and I hope to have more here soon. I can’t think of anything that’s on my radar at the moment, but I hope to possibly see some other movies soon, like “Ghost in the Shell.” I’ve already seen the original movie, so I figured it would be an appropriate time to go see the live action version, although I don’t know anyone who has seen any “Ghost in the Shell” material so that would probably be a waste. In couple of weeks, I’m definitely hoping to see “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” which luckily I do have people who are excited for that. As far as other news goes, there is a TV movie coming out on HBO this Sunday, that movie is called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” it’s based on a book by Rebecca Skloot, and focuses on the true story on the discovery of and research dedicated towards the HeLa cell, which changed cancer research forever. I MIGHT review it, I might not, I don’t even know if I’ll even see it, but if I do see it, there may be a possibility of an upcoming review concerning the film. Stay tuned for that if it ever comes around, along with future reviews and posts! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!