Fast & Furious 8 (4½ Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Fast & Furious series. The title is silly, whether it's spelt Fate or F8. I hope you approve of my sensible renaming.

The team has two new members in this film. The first is Ramsey, the hacker we met in the seventh film. She was rescued from a Nigerian terrorist, but I didn't expect to see her return in the next film as a team member. Maybe she had nowhere else to go.

There were enough jokes in the last film about her not looking like a hacker, so I won't repeat them here. I'll just say that I agree. She doesn't look like a hacker.

Roman and Tej are vying for her attention. Tej (on the right) says he's the most suitable partner because he's also a computer expert. Roman (on the left) says he's the most suitable partner because of his sex appeal. If he says so.....

The second new member is Deckard Shaw, and his presence in the team is even less expected. In "Fast & Furious 7" he was the team's enemy. I knew he wasn't really a bad guy. He was only taking revenge for his brother. But now his brother has recovered from his injuries, so there's no need for him to work against the team. Apart from that, the mysterious Mr. Nobody got him out of prison on condition that he did a job for him. That job involves taking down an international terrorist called Cipher.

A shocking development in this film is that Dominic Toretto (Dom) turns his back on his team to work for Cipher. It's obvious that she has something she's using against him, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. If you haven't seen the film yet, now's your time.

In the 11-minute pre-credits scene the film returns to its roots. Dom takes part in an illegal street race in the streets of Havana, Cuba.

There's a scene in which we see Luke Hobbs working as a football coach. He's good. He's really good. I wish VfB Stuttgart had a coach like him.

He turns innocent young girls into lean, mean fighting machines.

I'd be scared to play with a girl like this.

This girl scares me even more.

And a girl like this would make me run and hide behind the goalposts.

You can see where they've got it from.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock is the ex-wrestler who's the most talented actor. I feel tempted to say that he's the only ex-wrestler who's a good actor. Most wrestlers are embarrassing when they try to act, but don't tell them I said so. They're tougher than me.

I'm glad that Paul Walker's character, Brian O'Connor, hasn't been written out of the series after his death. It would have been tasteless to hear the team talking about him being killed by an enemy in between the films. He simply isn't there any more, so we can imagine that he's settled down as a happy family man, living a quiet life in a house by the beach. He's had enough of being fast and furious.

Success Rate:  + 2.9

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