Fast & Furious 7 review

Plot

Deckard Shaw (franchise newcomer Jason Statham) vows revenge against Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (the late Paul Walker) and their crew for hospitalising his brother Owen (Luke Evans) in the previous instalment.


Review

The Fast & Furious franchise, like malt whiskey, improves with age, with new chapter seemingly competing with the last to create the most breathtakingly extravagant sequences of no-holds-barred action ever committed to film, and here it’s topped itself again. It’s to the credit of everyone involved (Diesel, Walker, returning screenwriter Chris Morgan etc.) that a series of action films with a specific focus on cars is not only still going strong on its seventh entry, but is actually stronger than it was at its 2001 inception, when it began as a street-racing rehash of Point Break that was lacklustre at best and still had two extra ‘the’s in the title. Of course there’s always the fear that following a rigid, proven formula leads to a franchise that plods along repetitively, but luckily it appears we’re still one or two films away from reaching that point.

The success is at least partly credited to the point around the fourth or fifth film when the series stopped taking itself too seriously and embraced its own absurdity, which is perhaps driven by the fierce competition that seems to exist these days between F&F and the other big summer tentpole action franchises (Mission: Impossible, Transformers, The Expendables et al) to see who can create the craziest, most OTT antics, going to great lengths to beat each other out (Tom Cruise hanging from a plane for the upcoming M:I – Rogue Nation, for example). Then perhaps James Wan was the right choice to fill departing F&F veteran Justin Lin’s shoes as director. Despite being predominantly a maker of horror films and an action movie virgin, so to speak, as scary as he made his ghostly thrillers like Insidious and The Conjuring, he did it all in the name of fun, so audiences could enjoy them. And that’s exactly what he does here, and he does it well. However, he does overuse one shot of tilting the camera at the same rate a character falls or jumps or flips, which is at first inventive and thrilling to watch, but later becomes tiresome and dizzying.

Kurt Russell was a great addition to the cast, but felt underused given his history playing the iconic Snake Plissken. They could’ve done so much more with him, but when he did get into the action he didn’t disappoint. The Rock also felt underused, but not at the fault of the film’s crew. He was shooting Hercules at the time and couldn’t make it until later on. Because of this, his character Hobbs is injured early on and doesn’t make a comeback until the end, but it’s quite a comeback. Flexing his immense muscles to bust his casts off in the hospital, he marches into the big finale with a minigun and, when asked by Michelle Rodriguez if the cavalry is coming, quips “Woman, I am the cavalry.” Statham also has some great moments as a Special Forces-trained lone wolf-type villain, as do Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson as the much-needed comic relief.

Obviously the elephant in the room throughout the film is the tragic death of actor Paul Walker that occurred midway through production, and one would expect this to hinder the enjoyment of the film. The action, however, is so engrossing that this is not the case until the end, which is a tad messy. This can be forgiven, considering the circumstances, and you have to admire the fact that they shied away from killing his character off, in a film that would’ve made doing so stunningly easy, out of respect for Walker and those close to him, a group of people which notably includes the cast. The centre of the film, and arguably the franchise as a whole, is the bromance between Diesel and Walker that exists both on and off-screen, which comes to a head in the admittedly clunky final scene. Wan and his crew delivered yet another wonderfully insane escapist action-adventure, and ended on a sweet and poignant note to honor the actor who’s been with them since the beginning. The final tribute is so touching that you forget all about that as you try to hide the tears in your eyes. Even though it probably won’t be, I hope this is the final instalment in the franchise, as it would make an emotional and fitting end, and it wouldn’t feel the same without Paul.