Noticeably Sillier

Rating: 5/10 (1 June 2020)

Firstly I'll state by saying fast and furious is my favourite in the series. Having fallen off the franchise for a bit I picked up years later and found that although there were some over the top sequences, the film felt more grounded, took its time to build up, and the motivations of each character made sense. Sadly, I can't say the same here. The film starts with the scene of a robbery and some hammy dialogue from the Rock who rolls off his partners CV rather than simply say hello like a normal person. After this it's declared there's a surviving witness who the rock proceeds to beat the hell out of with no consequences, all the while it shot as a bit of a joke. It was at this point I knew the tone of the film was going to be a problem.
So a little bit of a retcon takes place revealing lettie is alive to give Dom some much needed reason to come out of retirement and in fairness, what else were they going to do at this point? What bothered me is the ease in which Dom is tracked down by Hobbs and the inexcusable logic of Paul Walker; a new father feeling compelled to join in risking his life for the ride. He's actually egged on by his wife (girlfriend, I duno) and really does stretch my patience.
So the film gets going and familiar tropes of tracking people through vehicle mods all crop up again. The banters largely fun between the team as it was in the last film but I can't help but find the moments of silliness (the rocks dive from a freeway onto a vehicle roof) grate on me a little too much. My score usually is 6/10 if decent and 7/10 if solid.... But if this film was on TV I'd probably skip next time. So with that in mind I'm giving this a 5/10.