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 2nd 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.
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