The Fate of the Furious

Fantastically filmed hogwash which I find incredibly entertaining. Great effects give even the most bizarre scenes a feeling of reality. Despite all of the crazy shit going down, the screenwriter manages to keep the story within firmly set bounds, and his imagination is admirable. Rock and Statham are delightful both with their cool lines and their friendly mockery of each other. Diesel is just classic. He made this movie for fun, earning some money at the same time. (04/21/2017)

Being the screenwriter of a billion-dollar franchise must be a bitch. Sniffing cocaine out of the asses of L.A.'s top prostitutes and knowing that no matter how much shit you do on paper, you'll get away with it and someone will actually film it eventually. Don't be fooled by the perfect production glitz because this is Hollywood sludge that lacks even a shred of judgment. I don't mind the overblown action orgy, where stuntmen go all out and everything is tuned by special effects artists who were paid handsomely for their overtime. It bothers me that it flies around the world without anchoring itself in the plot, that so many Deus ex machina enter the plot, and that even the zombie is supposed to be excused by the fact that family is the most important thing. It’s overpriced kitsch that does not caricature the trend set by the fifth film in the series but instead degrades it. (07/18/2017)

The more obvious the complexity of the plot twists in which the gang has been throwing itself five installments in a row, the greater my excitement for the resulting film. Just a while ago, I was worried that there was nowhere to go, nowhere to build expectations, and nowhere for the characters to go. However, for a long time now, I have seen that none of this is necessary. Vin Diesel, from the position of the main face, incorporates all conceivable fan wishes into the scripts, including the dream (and surprisingly perfect) portrayal of the main antagonist. In the slower passages, he murmurs several phrases on the theme of "My Family" with an incomprehensible bass voice, and at the same time, he manages to come up with a surprise that no one expects (this time it is that stealer of scenes, Jason Statham). Various criticisms of physics or logic have never been more pointless. This saga operates in its own universe, and I will be happy if it continues at similar two-year intervals for a long time. (05/18/2017)

An ultra-brutally overblown action flick (at times to the point where I was expecting the Death Star to be the target of the villains and The Rock to pull a Mustang with a built-in R2-D2 out of the garage), but one that manages the near-impossible feat of finding a workable balance between over-the-top superhero antics, where absolutely anything goes, and a more serious psychological conflict leading to seriously motivated nonsensical antics. And the middle ground is both in the addictive humour and the tremendous insight, thanks to which the film immediately gets the audience exactly where it wants to go, and every sci-fi element is simply funny and somehow natural. But there’s also the very well constructed script, which, for a change, deftly handles the limited communicativeness and resorts much less to visibly improvised and wannabe cool dialogues (and when it does, it's quite good, e.g. the delicate verbal shootouts between Johnson and Statham, which are the steroid of the first half). In addition to being deliberately over-the-top and spectacular, the action is also royally entertaining and intense, culminating in a double finale that is one of the most gripping in history (Statham now aspires to be the nanny of the century, his scene with the baby being the best sequence of the entire series). Charlize is a great villain, Gybson still isn't annoying, I still love Rodriguez, and I sincerely hope Gray stays fast and furious, because after the miserable Seven, my interest in this testosterone-laden franchise shot to considerable heights. 80% (04/17/2017)

It´s really sad when a similar essence of überblockbuster, which would like to rely on long excessive action-packed CGI escapades full of dozens of raining cars or nuclear submarines chasing the most luxurious sport cars on the planet, where perhaps two consecutive sequences cannot do without a Bay-scale explosion, only work during scenes where testosterone sparkles between Rock and Statham, where one or the other takes on the role of babysitter or women team coach, where Charlize and Kurt fully enjoy the guilty pleasure potential of their counterparts, etc. Thanks to making this movie move up to another level in term of everything (I was surprised it could be more absurd), this movie is the better one from the last two movie. But still, it has not found balance between various (what is missing are classic kicking someone´s ass moments which is a shame and it´s hard to believe with this cast) incomprehensible), team work and within the scope of a stylishly exaggerated blockbuster of the five. #family (04/12/2017)