7 Things About Fate of the Furious

1. Righteous Popcorn Burner Movie

F8 of the Furious delivers over the top action, and is a fantastic action movie. It's not very cerebral, it's not deep, and it isn't introspective. It is, however, funny, poignant, shocking, full of cars, jiggling ass cheeks, and the opening sequence is true to the heart of the series, absurd car races, family, and a multi-ethnic setting in Havanna, Cuba. We are going to go see it again this afternoon on a bigger fancier screen than out local theatre.

2. Cypher

Charlise Theron is equal parts smoking hot, manipulative, and infuriating. Her hacker character deconstructs people, is absolutely unflinchingly evil, and has no compunction about pulling triggers. Her multi-radar dish 'stealth' jet is also legit as hell. Agents of SHIELD jet has nothing on hers.

3. Zombie Cars

The zombie car sequence, with drive assist cars being hacked and sent running zombie style through the streets of NYC was amazing, mixing humor, terror, and over the top CARnage brilliantly.

4. Lamborghinis

Roman drives an orange Lamboghini Huracan across the ice in the Submarine heist scene, the car resists all the Soviet surplus machine gun rounds that are shot at it, with the bullets sparking off it's bright orange paint.

The Huracan has an aluminum shell with carbon fiber bits. Neither of these materials are remotely bullet proof. The car should have belched fire and smoke and died when it's ass was sprayed with the 12.7mm NSV machine gun rounds from the chasing Russian defectors. And no, there were no modifications, the Huracan is a showroom car (in the movie it is described as such) and they give Roman shit for not even fitting it with snow tires.

5. The Akula Class Attack Submarine

The big sub that comes smashing through the ice and chases the cars is an Akula class, built in the mid 1980s. No matter how wicked your hacking skills are, a 30 year old submarine sitting in a naval base is not going to have enough automation for it to be computer hijacked and stolen without a crew.

The Akula doesn't have any vertical launch missile tubes, because it is an attack sub, not a missile sub. Even if it did, the missiles in the tubes would very likely be green with CCCP on the side, not white and black with the radioactive logo on the nose. US missles do tend to be white and black, so tada.

The surface top speed of an Akula is 12 mph. In open conditions, not smashing through ice. Underwater, it's best speed is 40 mph. Massing between 8000 and 12000 tons (I can't tell what model Akula she was) it is not going to be fast to accelerate. Certainly not fast enough to keep up with wheeled and tracked vehicles on ice.

The Russian R-73 Archer heat seeking missile has a 16 pound explosive warhead, in contrast, the standard torpedo warhead is 500 kg. The archer hitting the sail of the Akula shouldn't have even scuffed the paint, let alone punched all the way through the tower and gutting the shit in the process. The torpedoes exploding on top of the ice, however, should have shattered the ice shelf across the bay.

6. The Shaw Brothers

Bringing Jason Statham in for the movie was a stroke of genius, and he mixes violence and assholery with humor and insults to perfection. The appearance of Luke Evans' Owen Shaw is a great throwback to previous movies. Torreto plays the family card, bringing other families into play.

7. Transition Complete

The series has transitioned itself away from being race and car centric to being a tentpole action series. There are still car races, but the races themselves are no longer the core of the story. Fast and Furious have blended over into the XXX universe, and the differences between Dominic Toretto and Xander Cage are much smaller. After having watched the original just a week ago, the transition from Toretto being a truck hijacker and street racer to a globe trotting nuke chaser are stark.

I'm just waiting for a Fast and Furious television series.