Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten a lot of hate for the degree to which I hyped up “The Fate of the Furious.” To make matters worse, the haters were right, and I was wrong: the film was kind of disappointing.

The movie opens in typical “Furious” fashion, with Vin Diesel’s character Dominic Toretto beating an overconfident, unsuspecting Cuban local in a drag race. Toretto makes amends with his competitor, and soon after meets a young woman feigning automotive need. This woman, acting under the pseudonym Cipher, turns out to be the same Cipher that has committed acts of cyberterrorism around the world.  Cipher manages to blackmail Toretto into being her partner, and the rest of the movie is a chase to prevent Cipher from creating more chaos, and to bring an end to Toretto’s run as a Rogue One (get it?).

While this plot line  may seem fairly cohesive, the narrative arch as a whole is one discombobulated mess, mainly because there are multiple occasions where forgotten characters conveniently appear out of nowhere to save the day. For example, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the antagonist in “Fast 7,” joins forces with Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in “The Fate of the Furious.” And despite the fact that the two make multiple attempts to kill one another in the prequel to this film, that isn’t the problem. The problem is that Shaw’s mother, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Her Majesty, literally comes out of nowhere in the latter half of the movie. Without her, the film would have a completely different outcome. That’s not okay.

Thankfully, the high standard the “Furious” franchise has set for itself regarding graphics is lived up to. However, the stunts weren’t as fantastically extravagant as they were in “Fast 7.” There are no cars jumping from one skyscraper to another in Abu Dhabi, nor are there any vehicles skydiving off of airplanes into mountain ranges. Controlling the movement of all of the cars in New York City? Pretty cool, I guess. But not that fun to watch.

The acting from Diesel’s supporting cast is strong, with my favorite duo of Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej Parker (Ludacris) delivering their usual humorous back-and-forth quips that get the whole theater laughing. Additionally, Diesel is effective in conveying Toretto’s internal conflict about going rogue.

Overall, the film certainly isn’t bad – it just isn’t great. Maybe I was too big a fan of “Fast 7” with exorbitantly high of hopes for its sequel. That said, Diesel and company have already set the next installment of “Fast and the Furious” to release on April 19, 2019. Needless to say, I’ll be watching on opening night.