Furious 7
Directed by:
James WanComposer:
Brian TylerCast:
Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Dwayne Johnson, Kurt Russell, Tony Jaa, Djimon Hounsou (more)VOD (5)
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Vengeance hits home in Fast & Furious 7 as Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson lead an all-star cast across the globe in their most gravity-defying and emotional adventure yet. Targeted by a cold-blooded black ops assassin with a score to settle (Jason Statham), their only hope is to get behind the wheel again and secure an ingenious prototype tracking device. Facing their greatest threat yet in places as far away as Abu Dhabi and as familiar as the Los Angeles streets they call home, the crew must come together once again as a team, and as a family, to protect their own. (Universal Pictures UK)
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Reviews (12)
Wan intentionally walks along the brink of parody. And you realize this already in the first scene with Statham’s brutal entry. The Fast and Furious series has worked its way up from a car tuning variation on Point Break to a high-tech spy-related celebration of family values where there’s still a lot of driving, but also equal doses of shooting and brutal hand-to-hand fights. The storyline as a whole makes very little sense. Technically, Vin Diesel and his gang are baddies who almost killed Statham’s brother - and that makes it personal - and in his revenge, Statham is just following Diesel’s philosophy regarding family. The action scenes are on a higher level than in the preceding episode. Who ever thought that the airplane from episode six couldn’t be outdone was seriously wrong. All the three gigantic car wars (Azerbaijan, Abu Dhabi, L.A.) are even crazier still. The incredible tricks with the bus where Paul Walker and Tony Jaa have a one-to-one and Diesel drives downhill are comparable to Transformers in terms of opulence. Abu Dhabi offers the much-viewed jump by Lykan through the skyscrapers (terrorists are already taking notes) and L. A. is the location for the showdown to symbolize a kind of homecoming. And the entire dynamics of problem-solving is extraordinarily idiosyncratic. Someone comes up with a crazy idea and the others say... ok then. Kurt Russel finances it, does a promotion stunt for Belgian ale and turns the series into a regular imitation of old Bond movies. James Wan wanted to make the style more like the classic movies about revenge from the 70s, but I’m not so sure it worked. This part is certainly a lot darker than all the preceding ones. This was quite easy to build up to this with the killer Statham. The close-ups give conflicts greater depth, but the white-hot action moves the genre type somewhere completely different. The habit of breaking up fist fights is only kicked with the Statham vs. The Rock match, the other fights then began falling apart again, which was most disappointing in the Diesel vs. Statham finale. The final conflict of two family guys (a monkey wrench against pieces of sheet metal) still hasn’t managed to outdo the clash of the titans from part five. The farewell to Paul Walker is sad, but well-done with a message (of course) about family and a final glance at the roots of the series. Paul left when the going was good (he even trained up Tony Jaa!) because the series can’t get any crazier or more entertaining than it is right now. P.S.: Those who fault its logic and burble about it not making sense of course are right, but they haven’t understood one fundamental thing. From time to time, viewers like this sort of action porn and Diesel and his gang are always pleased to entertain.
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You would not resist falling in love with it if the movie had been more (much more) self-conscious as it was in the Rock or Statham scenes. In this way it is an unprecedented “over the guilty pleasure top" soap opera action movie with over-the top story line, which despite having an ultimate testosterone cast is lame, because instead of these guys punching each other all the time, the computers animating their CGI doubles in flying cars in many different ways are applied. And it is captures by a shaking camera, where the overall confusing chaos is multiplied by the epilepsy-inducing editing. Last time we saw such a waste of potential/cast was in... Well, actually sixth Fast and Furious. PS: Diesel will say "We are/I was a family" in different ways perhaps even more often than "I'm Groot" in the Guardians of the Galaxy.
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I'm not going say that I wasn't entertained by flying cars, unbreakable body shells or a badass Jason Statham because I'd be lying. I had so much fun that what should have otherwise deserved 5 stars for the amazing action spectacle turned into a slightly awkward joke worthy of 3 stars, where everything turns against the narrator and a perceptive viewer familiar with the laws of physics and limited human abilities rather appreciates every moment when they do not have to laugh loudly and continuously – not to mention that the twist is nothing to write home about. To put it another way, the action is entertaining, but it makes you laugh mostly unintentionally, the script is weak, reminiscent of an action video game, where each new level is accompanied by a change of location and a new form of combat against the main enemy, and if we look back at the film, apart from a touching final farewell to Paul Walker, we see only an incoherent sequence of explosions and crazy stunt (or rather digital) action scenes. Thank God for the truly great actors who belong, belonged and will always belong to this series (R.I.P.). 65%
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“Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind.” It’s hard to say whether the screenwriters of this soap-operatic action franchise are fans of Lilo & Stitch, but they definitely transformed that film’s motto into the defining principle of the Fast & Furious series. In the seventh instalment about family, not only does absolutely every character on the franchise team yammer on about it, but so does the main antagonist, which opens up endless possibilities for more and more sequels in the future. Furthermore, we can apply the quote to the way in which the series bid farewell to the late Paul Walker, which goes against the expectations of supposedly seasoned viewers. Otherwise, replacement of the director brought forth very few changes (which raises the question of who serves as the showrunner in major film series) and instead rather intensified existing tendencies. Though the film has officially merged with the Forza Motorsport video-game brand, it is still firmly rooted in GTA. In addition to the general over-the-top comic-book stylisation, this is apparent mainly in the narrative, which this time is constructed according to an adventure formula whereby in order to achieve a particular goal, it is necessary to obtain the means to do so, which are connected with the fulfilment of a number of secondary tasks. The alternation of action scenes and melodrama continues in Furious 7 and again the non-action scenes serve as a radical retarder in every sense of the word. Nevertheless, the fountain of blather about family has already taken on an utterly absurd dimension, especially in combination with the ridiculously ripped Diesel and cartoonishly executed scenes. The formulaic nature of the film goes beyond the boundary of insipid soap operas into the realm of hysterical camp, which, however, adds to its fun factor. After all, how seriously Furious 7 should be taken is laid bare in the opening scene, which reliably divides the audience into those who will focus on realism, logic, causality and other things that are out of place here, and those who are in tune with the film’s mix of outlandishly overwrought pathos, kitsch and delirious ostentation. The previous instalment in the series had already gone beyond Bond-esque spectacle to surreal bombast in terms of the conceptualisation and stylisation of action scenes, and that trend continues here. Unfortunately, that includes the desperate climax swimming in CGI. Luckily, we can understand it as material fatigue following much more imaginative previous scenes, both in terms of the action itself and the shooting thereof. The fetishistic details of shifting gears and stomping on the pedals were transformed into a spectacular sequence of impressions with a throbbing cadence of a few windows. This time, the camera remains stable in the details and, conversely, takes greater risks in larger shots, which is beneficial to the dynamics of the sequences. But on the other hand, as has already been mentioned, the change of director did not change the direction of the series. There is no ground-breaking remodelling as in the fifth instalment; instead, only the formula established by that film is varied and a few nuances are added. Whereas comic-book movies strive for some overlaps and emotional swings, Fast & Furious is pure escapist popcorn that is entertaining as both a silly action flick and campy melodrama, and imminently forgettable.
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If it weren't for the completely unnecessary digital shenanigans with the drone and helicopter at the end, it would have been even better, because otherwise, everything in the seventh Fast & Furious is probably better than last time. The characters have something to say, the action is mostly very over the top but at least entertaining, and the man-on-man (and woman-on-woman) battles are just as interesting as the parachuting cars. Especially Vin Diesel versus Jason Statham... Now that's what I call a proper finale! Otherwise, I also have to bow to the tricksters, because I thought Paul Walker was digital only at the very end, before that damn touching cut; and yet I saw in the "making of" that he was digital much earlier – and it had never even occurred to me.
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