Fast 8 may do the impossible: make Tyrese look cool

I think we can all sit here in agreement and say that the Fast & Furious series is fun as hell. You've got fast cars and dangerous drivers flying off cliffs and out of large aircraft. Vin Diesel and his crew drive through exotic locales without any regard for the laws of physics, saving the world, while still maintaining their status as the best bad guys on the planet. There's just one weak link in the chain:

Roman Pearce. Smirking, big foreheaded, can't find a dollar for the vending machine Roman Pearce. Maybe you feel differently, but Tyrese has been playing the merry buster onscreen for way too long. Every time he worries about how little sense a plan makes, I wanna shout, "Then go home, Roman!" because if I wanted to be grounded by good sense I wouldn't be watching Furious 7 to begin with.

But something seems different with Fast 8, the series' latest installment. Director F. Gary Gray has been posting behind-the-scenes footage to his Instagram lately, and a recent clip shows an action sequence being shot in Iceland. It's there that we see Tyrese — and I can't believe I'm actually writing this — actually looking like a badass.

Just in case you missed it on Friday! #fastfridays #f8 #turnup #literally #behindthescenes

A video posted by F Gary Gray (@fgarygray) on Jun 6, 2016 at 4:55pm PDT

The whole sequence resembles something out of a Mad Max movie set during the Ice Age. You've got the Murcielago. You've got cars on tank treads. And you've got Tyrese standing over his enemies like some kind of action hero.

I'm not saying Roman will finally graduate from comic relief to being an effective action movie star. No one's saying he's the next Vin Diesel. But I'm actually a little excited to see him get things done. And that confuses the hell out of me.

• ViaBirth Movies Death
• SourceF. Gary Gray (Instagram)