Tag: Dwayne Johnson

The Fate of the Furious (Review)

The Fate of the Furious (Review)

Binge watch The Fast and the Furious franchise and take a shot every time someone mentions “family.”

I haven’t been keeping up with the “Fast and the Furious” franchise.  The last movie I actually watched all the way through was the first one back in 2001. I saw a few moments of 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift but had no real interest in continuing to watch the series.  It seemed to be a generic popcorn franchise that studios continued to pop out for easy money.

Around the time the fifth one came out, I started hearing people say that the films were actually good.  Still, I didn’t pay them any attention, even when Dwayne Johnson joined the franchise and they stopped being about street racing and started saving the world in elaborate ways involving cars.  Eventually, my buddy Mason from ReelDudeReviews asked me to join him opening night and since I had no other plans, we went and watched it.

One thing I appreciated from the movie was it’s tongue in cheek nature.  Nothing ever seems to be done with any real seriousness.  Being chased by police?  Send a wrecking ball through them.  No reason how or why that happens, it just does.  It’s one of those movies where cool things happen with a the slightest of reasons given as to why they happen.  Normally this would be a criticism, but for this film, I have a hard time criticizing it for that.  It’s a film that knows exactly why people came to watch it.  They didn’t come for the logic, they came for cool action and set pieces.

The only real criticism I can even think of is that the film has about seven films worth of backstory that go right over my head.  I had to guess that Paul Walker’s character’s name in the movie was Brian (again, I had only seen him in the film back in 2001) when they mention him in passing.  I didn’t know who was who or how they related to each other.  I didn’t know when Kurt Russel joined the franchise or why.  I was really surprised with Nathalie Emmanuel showed up in the film as a hacker, having only seen her in Game of Thrones.

The film is so over the top at times that it almost takes away from the impact of the more serious scenes.  The premise is that Vin Diesel’s character is being forced to work for Charlize Theron thus betraying his family (shot).  It’s a emotional situation that lends itself to good drama but at the same time, it has a hard time reconciling itself with how ridiculous the action scenes become.

Again, I can’t really fault the movie too harshly.  It’s a movie that did exactly what it set out to do.  It’s an action movie that entertains with the bare minimum of effort given to plot, character development and scripting and the maximum of effort given to intense action sequences.  All of this is held together with a cast that is surprisingly strong together even when I don’t have the experiences that I assume most people had watching all the movies previously.

Family (shot).

Moana (Review)

Moana (Review)

Directed by Disney duo Ron Clements and Jon Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin), Moana follows the titular Moana (Auli’i Cravalho), the daughter of the chief of a Polynesian tribe, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with a goddess.  She sets sail in search of the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) as she hopes to save her people.

I was really excited for this movie, mainly because the Polynesian culture is a culture that is very rarely seen in films.  And the film did not disappoint. Right from the start, the film immerses you in Polynesian culture, to the point that I am still humming and listening to “We Know the Way” even days after watching it.  Though, I guess I could say that of every song in the film as each song is catchy and powerful, and the soundtrack as a whole is more focused and thematically linked than Frozen, which suffered from a soundtrack and sounded like it was written by fifteen different people.

Everything from the music to the design of the characters instantly makes the film stand out from other similarly animated films such as Frozen and Tangled.  I make those comparisons mainly because the animation style (or at least the style of the characters) reminds me a lot of them.  Though I guess it’s no surprise considering that they are all animated by the same team.  It’s by no means a problem nor is it a distraction, though I almost wish the art style was different in order to differentiate the movies from each other artistically.  I remember how Mulan was animated to almost appear like a Chinese painting and I wish Moana was more Polynesian in style as well as story.

That issue is just a minor one for me, however.  While I was watching I didn’t care about the style because I was wrapped up in the story, the characters and the music.  While the story suffers in certain places (the beginning sort of drags and meanders while a character’s return at the end feels abrupt), it is the characters that sell it.  Moana is strong-willed but also unsure of herself.  In fact, it is her internal struggle that ends up being more interesting than her external struggle and I will always love movies like that.  It gives the film it’s center, it’s heart and it’s how we latch on to a character.  I don’t care who you are, at some point in your life you struggled with the age old question of “who you are.”

This theme of identity also extends to Maui, who at first appears to a somewhat charming yet brutish and selfish warrior, changes towards the end as we explore where he came from and why he is the way it is.  His struggles never overshadows Moana’s struggles, however, and the focus always remains on Moana and her adventure.  I say ‘adventure’ and not ‘story’ because this film really is an adventure form start to finish.  The common sentiment with this film is that Moana is Disney’s first action princess and they are absolutely correct.  She knows what she needs to do and she rarely hesitates.

Moana was an absolute joy from start to finish.  It’s funny, it’s endearing and I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.  You should absolutely watch this movie.