The most recent installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise introduces two Oscar-winning actresses – one of which is Charlize Theron who plays Cipher and Dame Helen Mirrren who incidentally has a love for racing in real life. Fast 8 also stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Kurt Russell, Elsa Pataky, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jason Statham, and Scott Eastwood.

I think it’s fair to say that Fate & Furious has been receiving some pretty bad press of its, despite profiting a whopping $6.6million internationally on day one of its release.

You’ve only got to read the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or publications such as The Guardian to realize that most audiences have been thoroughly disappointed.

We went to see it and here’s what we thought…

Jason Statham is a legend, isn’t he? Everyone loves a bit of the Statham. His snarky one-liners together with his fighting skills make the film more worthwhile in our opinion. Also, if you’re looking for some muscle action, Dwayne Johnson’s got it in spades and buckets.

The plot follows Dom, Vin Diesel’s sonorous-voiced crim with a heart of gold, who’s living in Cuba with his lover Letty (Michelle Rodriguez).

The film starts off on a great note, things are going well – they’re planning a family – as you do… Then, things take a major turn for the worst as Charlize Theron’s Cipher comes to poop on the couple’s parade. Charlize plays a tech-savant terrorist, whose keyboard talents are ones to be reckoned with. With just one swipe of her smartphone (Tim Cook’s answer to Tinder), she’s blackmailed Dom over secrets from his past; rather than risk those secrets coming out, he helps her steal a series of powerful doohickeys that together might just bring about nuclear destruction.

Similar to all movies, nothing goes smoothly – Dom encounters some obstacles in the shape his old racing buddies, including Dwayne Johnson’s law-enforcement-officer turned speed-racer, and – in a nice twist – Deckard Shaw, Jason Statham’s big bad from the last outing, now performing the role of acid-tongued antihero.

All in all, we really didn’t think it was that bad. We actually enjoyed it. Yes, the plot was probably one of the weakest, but the actors in this sequel were excellently matched, and the chemistry worked well on screen.

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