Considering that this is the 8th movie in the franchise, there's a lot of character backstory and stories from the previous films, that the audience are already expected to know before watching this. That way, this installment can simply focus much more on the action set pieces than any of that plot development and story telling nonsense. I say that a little flippantly because I knew that the story isn't necessarily what most people look forward to when they plan to see this movie, but the action definitely has to hold up. Does it though?
Needless to say, the story is at best just serviceable. It created the necessary premise for an ultimate betrayal within the group of our familiar characters to drive the plot forward. There's a bigger threat that needs to be stopped, which means that this movie created a villain, that is a bigger villain than the last villain, who was already suppose to be a bigger villain than the last villain... With that said, Charlize Theron plays the stone cold villain pretty well, but then there are new characters like the one played by Scott Eastwood that I wished wasn't in this movie at all. At least the movie is automatically better when Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are on the screen.
At this point, the characters really are just there to play their parts, and not too much more. Character development is now superficially done at best. This is honestly disappointing. It only makes this franchise seem like it's starting to spin it's wheels in place, without doing anything really interesting, besides just trying to one-up itself. That derivative factor, the plot conveniences, the huge requirement to suspend disbelief, are all starting to feel really obvious and tiring now.
Luckily, it seems this franchise can still rely on what it's good at. Figuring out ways to make action sequences with vehicles; plus now there's a submarine involved too. I would say that there are at least five huge action set pieces that highlight this movie, and some of them can really justify that price of admission. From a fun street race, to a heist involving a lot of cars crashing, this franchise is still able to entertain me with how they use vehicles like super weapons. How far can they go with this franchise though? It's starting to feel like it's getting past it's expiration date.
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