Furious 7 (**½)

Directed by: James Wan

Starring: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Kurt Russell, Jason Statham, Nathalie Emmanuel, Djimon Hounsou, Tony Jaa, Ronda Rousey, Lucas Black, Elsa Pataky,

Seen: April 2^nd 2015

**½ Out of ****

I really enjoyed the Fast and Furious movies. #2 and #3 was a bit below par, but still enjoyable enough. #1 was great and is already a classic, while #5 and #6 reinvented the franchise. #7 takes the action and vehicular carnage up several notches, which in my opinion is several notches too far. Now the previous two movies did feature some absolutely ridiculous disavowal of physical laws, but the one thing they still got right was getting the viewer to care about what happens, to jerk a knee or flinch on behalf of the characters. Furious 7 takes things beyond far, beyond ridicule, and, as was bound to happen, beyond entertaining (in a not-so-good way). Furious 7 seems to want to keep up with superhero movies and the like, but what we are left with is action that is so loud, so dialled-past-eleven, you lose interest and start watching the clock about half-way through. It’s boring if two characters slug it out for what seems like hours of movie time without even a bruise to show for it.

In Furious 6, the team eventually took down Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) after some delicious mass destruction. Deckard Shaw (Statham), Owen’s bigger, “badder”, and all-round more evil brother, visits Owen in hospital (if you can call the carnage a visit), and very nearly kills Hobbs (Johnson) at his offices. After events in London in Furious 6, the team is back in the United States, living the family life, when out of nowhere they are brutally attacked, Dom’s home blown up after a call, from Deckard Shaw in Japan (the call placed after the credits in Furious 6). He’s a relentless force of murder, mayhem, destruction, and revenge, on the team’s track to avenge his brother. He used to be a Special Forces operative, but he went rogue after his government turned on him. Dom (Diesel) visits Hobbs in hospital to find out more about Shaw, before heading to Tokyo to collect Han’s body. He meets up with Sean Boswell (Black, from The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift), who gives him Han’s items found at the crash site where Shaw killed Han. Dom continues chasing Shaw, and when he finds him, he’s interrupted by Frank Petty (Russell), who asks Dom to help them stop mercenary Mose Jakande (Hounsou) from obtaining some seriously powerful surveillance software, in turn for allowing them use of this software to find Shaw.

Furious 7 is, like the previous two movies in the franchise, completely over-the-top. The problem here is that it is so far over the top as to almost qualify the movie as science fiction. The “stunts” (digital recreations of vehicular acrobatics) are five notches up from the already ridiculous “stunts” in the previous movies, to a point where the movie’s only aim seems to be to bludgeon the viewer into acquiescence that this is the best and biggest Fast and Furious movie to date. The movie features one-liners that are inappropriate before they can be perceived to be remotely funny for even a moment (I’m going to put a hurting on him so bad, he's gonna wish his mama kept her legs closed…), and a plot that’s thinner than orphanage soup – really, does the villain wait for them to arrive in exotic new locations before continuing the mayhem or what? The trailer featured a car being driven out of a building and into the next, but the movie goes one “better”, the car drives through that building and in an instant replay of what happened 10 seconds earlier, it jumps to yet another building, before crashing out of that building too. That’s the way this movie was made, dial everything up to 11, ignore that you’re already past 10, and keep going as far as is imaginatively possible. And them some more…

I am a big fan of the two movies preceding this one (#5 and #6), but in all honesty I started checking my watch about halfway through this one. At 140 minutes it is massive for an action movie, and with so little time spent on actual story/drama, the action and carnage become little more than constant noise. Paul Walker is properly sent off though, and in these few moments this movie achieves some sort of redemption, as, even in my boredom, I was suddenly engaged for a while. See Furious 7 for the Paul Walker farewell, but know that the rest of the movie pales in comparison to its predecessors.