Furious 7 Movie Review

It's one of those movies where it's considered to be too many movies to their franchise but I believe it's a franchise that can make as many movies as they like and they will still be incredible. Sometimes the parting company with a friend is as simple as reaching a fork in the road. When Paul Walker, one of the rapidly growing roster of stars of the Fast & Furious franchise, died in a high-speed road accident just over a year ago, the widespread shock at the news of his death was followed by a realisation that the next film would somehow have to address it.

The Fast & Furious franchise has gone full Toon Town. What began six films ago as Point Break with pimped-out rims has since become the world’s most expensive Road Runner skit — essentially The Rock hitting Jason Statham over the head with an anvil while Vin Diesel sticks his finger in a light socket. Horror maestro James Wan (standing in for series stalwart Justin Lin) has embraced the saga’s unreserved silliness wholeheartedly, shaking the bottle, popping the cork and letting it all burst forth in a fizzing, frothy fountain of swollen muscles and polished chrome.

In the 14 years since the series’ modest beginnings, its joyridin' heroes have been all but bulletproof. To date, two lead characters have "died" on screen only to reappear in later installments. But Walker’s death changed that: it came loaded with an acknowledgment that these ferocious, fast-living young stars were mortal too.

he film opens with Statham’s salty killer Deckard Shaw growling “bollocks” at his ailing brother’s bedside. We pull back to see that he’s slaughtered two dozen SWAT members and shot up half the hospital just to deliver a ‘get well soon’ in person. Segue to an outrageous, cock-measuring punch-up with The Rock, and Wan has set the tone for the entire movie. To appraise the plot in too much detail would rather miss the point. Suffice it to say this is senseless bobbins from top to bottom and makes not one lick of sense if regarded with anything approaching logical scrutiny. As with the previous installment, Diesel’s ragtag band of street-racing ragamuffins have somehow graduated from small-time crooks to a globe-trotting Special Forces outfit — a kind of wifebeater-sporting IMF with a throaty V8 stuffed down its trousers.

They flit from London to LA via Abu Dhabi and Azerbaijan in search of mysterious device ‘the God’s Eye’, which will help them track down Shaw — a premise somewhat undermined by the fact that Shaw himself is in hot pursuit, dropping in on every location they visit like a bestubbled T-1000. But, of course, none of that really matters when you’re watching a live-action Looney Tune in which people jump supercars between high-rises and pull doughnuts on the edge of cliffs. This boasts set-pieces that might well be the franchise’s most demented yet (which is saying something after 5’s safe-dragging cars and Diesel’s cross-carriageway tank flight in 6). Paul Walker runs the length of a bus roof as it slides off a cliff, Diesel flings his ride at a helicopter and the entire team parachute out of a plane in their cars. Furious 7, as it’s known Stateside, exalts in wanton carnage, giddily surpassing Michael Bay levels of destruction by the story’s end.

In a gut-twisting mid-film car chase through the mountains of Azerbaijan, we see his character, the FBI agent Brian O’Conner, tightrope walk across the roof of a bus as it teeters on a crumbling cliff-edge. The film cuts away to another scene of Vin Diesel and Jason Statham careering through a forest driving muscle cars like dodgems, but you wish the camera had stayed with Walker and allowed him 

to complete the stunt without allowing us a pause for breath.

 Even low-born, trash cinema like this can cheat time and beat death. That’s the movies’ single greatest power – and why I found myself unexpectedly shedding a tear at the film’s perfectly judged, sunbathed, final fade to white.

But few people go to Fast & Furious films to cry. They go, as the title suggests, for loud cars and bad tempers, of which this seventh installment delivers plenty – and perhaps a little too many. At two-and-a-quarter hours, Fast & Furious 7 is long and lumpy, and expectations that a new director – James Wan, recruited from the relatively cheap Saw and Insidious horror series – might bring a Roger Corman-like efficiency to the franchise go mostly unmet.

While The Rock continues to gnaw on the lion’s share of both lines and laughs (muscle-flexing his way out of an arm cast is a particular joy to behold), F&F7 is very much Diesel’s film. Meat-sandwich Dom is the unlikely source of both exposition and emotion here, and though the amnesia subplot with Michelle Rodriguez’ Letty is visible (one chapel-based flashback will make you laugh out loud), he fills the role admirably. Sadly, it comes by way of necessity as Paul Walker’s death mid-shoot required substantial changes to the script. To the credit of all involved, the joints are largely seamless. Walker’s brothers, Caleb, and Cody stand in for the actor in a few long shots and CG trickery competently fudges the close-ups. It does add a slightly sombre note to an otherwise upbeat film, but the care with which the issue is handled forms a genuinely moving tribute to the actor, Toretto’s usual guff about “family” striking a chord that it never has before.

Fast & Furious is Hollywood’s most ludicrous (and Ludacris) franchise by a car-length, and 7, which feels like a trolley dash in a napalm factory, is the most gonzo installment yet. But despite dialog that makes The Expendables sound like Shakespeare and action make even Wile E. Coyote cock a disbelieving eyebrow, this is a gleeful, exuberant romp of a movie. Not bad, then. Just drawn that way.

It's explosive and crazy and absolutely mindblowing. It's incredible to have a movie that can touch everyone's lives, not from just one film but a collection from their franchise. It's an incredible movie. From everyone in the cast. It tears me to say this but may he rest in peace Mr. Paul Walker. 

A group more bulletproof than The Avengers, causing more mayhem than General Zod. Think Universal doesn’t have a superhero franchise? Think again. 

5 Star movie. A real must see! 

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