Furious 7 (’15 review)

4 outta 5

Spanning seven official installments, two short films of minimal quality, an upcoming ride, and an unofficial prequel (Better Luck Tomorrow, really good flick) when the Fast and the Furious franchise is strung together it becomes a multiple character saga with cars, gals in short-shorts, growling, product placement, Vin Diesel saying the word “family”, melodrama and things exploding. The latest instalment, Furious 7, ups the ante in spectacle.  While there may not be anything as deliriously insane as the cars vs. tank scene of Fast 6 (possibly a series best) it gets really close.   Also Furious 7 has a deeply emotionally affecting coda.   The Fast and Furious series has long left behind petty notions of realistic physics or logic but it supplies ample gleeful mayhem.

After Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew stop an international terrorist the aforementioned terrorist’s bigger, badder brother, Dekard Shaw (Jason Statham), is out for vengeance.  Shaw puts Dom’s Fed buddy, Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) in the hospital, kills Dom’s buddy Han, and blows up Dom’s house. Now Dom’s crew consisting of new dad Brian (Paul Walker), the amnesiac Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), fast talking Roman (Tyrese Gibson), tech guy Tej (Ludacris), are recruited by a government spook who calls himself “Mr. Nobody” (Kurt Russell) to track down a hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel) that has been abducted by Shaw.  Therefore Dom’s crew have to drive cars really fast to take out Shaw before he murders them all. 

Walker added exuberance to his role which juxtaposed nicely with the perpetually dour Vin Diesel.  The contrast was why they made a good pairing.   A big problem with the making of Furious 7 was the tragic death of actor Paul Walker during filming.  He had finished some scenes and the rest was accomplished with stand-ins and visual effects.  It’s fairly convincing the way Walker is a main character throughout the movie – mostly it looks like footage that was shot before he died – but sometimes you can see the seams.  A scene Dom has with Brian on a plane is cobbled together from leftover Walker footage with Diesel delivering most of the dialogue. There are also a few scenes where characters are talking about Brian without him in the scene.  This creates an artificial distance to some moments because Walker wasn’t available.  However, this artificial distance works really well in the finale when Dom says goodbye to Brian from afar.   Closing with a montage of Walker through the Furious series is surprisingly emotional and the final shot is absolutely perfect. 

Diesel’s screen-time mostly consists of him talking about how his crew is family or how he likes Corona.  One of the best interactions he has with Walker is when Dom has to lift a car for Brian to hotwire it and Brian asks, hesitantly, “You got this, right?”  This leads into one of the movie’s best scenes involving chaos across a high rise as characters get into various brawls, climaxing with the duo driving a car through three buildings as Brian yells “Car’s don’t fly, Dom!”  

The movie juggles quite a few characters so it’s not all Vin Diesel and Walker.  Johnson’s perpetually angry lawman gets a brutal brawl with Statham with Johnson dropping his signature “Rock Bottom” wrestling move on Statham through a glass table.  Unfortunately, Johnson is sidelined for most of the movie however his return is fantastic.  He breaks off a cast by flexing his arm, runs an ambulance into a drone and shoots the drone in the face with the baddies yelling “Someone just double-tapped our drone, sir!”  While it’s unimaginative that the baddie in Furious 7 is simply the brother of the baddie of Fast 6, Statham provides villainous fun.  Statham seems better suited to play heavies instead of heroes so he’s a blast here as he’s introduced in a long, menacing tracking shot.  Russell basically just drops exposition but its Kurt Russell looking cool so that’s a pass.  Furious 7 features a parade of returning series vets, even a cameo from Tokyo Drift star Lucas Black, with Gibson being comedic relief, and Rodriquez’s Letty seemingly leaving Dom but she returns about 20 minutes later.  Emmanuel’s sexy hacker is yet another sexy hacker in a long history of Hollywood sexy hackers who looks sexy as she hacks computers. 

Furious 7 has so many insanely illogical scenes it’s kind of admirable. One scene features the crew in their cars parachuting out of an airplane and landing on a mountain for a high-speed fracas.  The final shoot-out in downtown L.A. with cars and helicopters is bit too much as some of the action gets lost in the chaos but there are multiple awesome action beats delivered such as a fleet-footed confrontation Brian has with an evil goon (Tony Jaa).  Even though the primary mode of action is vehicular mayhem the movie often throws in various fist-fights as well.

The level of death defying action has basically crossed the Fast and Furious series into superhero category but it has an imaginative pizzazz.   Furious 7 is a neat capper to the previous madness, now down one key member of its deep roster, with its future journeying down a different road.