Furious 7
D: James Wan
W: Chris Morgan
S: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Kurt Russell, Jason Statham, Djimon Hounsou
I'm back! Let me start off by saying that I apologize to all those who read my blog for the lack of content these past couple of months. I've been handling two jobs and dealing with other miscellaneous malarkey but hopefully I'll get more reviews out to you. I'll even publish the reviews I had published while taking my news writing courses. In the meantime, here's my Furious 7 review.
The crew is taking one last ride in, what appears to be, the final installment of the Fast & Furious franchise with Furious 7. This time around Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew are being hunted down by the skilled British assassin Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) who was the brother of Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), the antagonist in the previous film, to avenge his nearly dead brother. Dominic go to great lengths to protect his family (both literal and figurative) and does whatever it takes to stop Deckard.
I’ll be perfectly honest with you readers, this is as of right now the only Fast & Furious movie that I've seen. For some reason this franchise has never really interested me, which is weird. I've always been a fan of the ridiculous over-the-top action films, within reason of course, but with this franchise I can’t put my finger on why I don't care for it.
This film didn't really help get me that interested in checking out the previous movies. For one thing, this movie was clearly made with the fans in mind. There are a ton of references and call-backs to previous installments that I had to look up to understand. Which isn't a bad thing, I say that because one of my favorite franchises has a whole ton of inside jokes. I’m of course talking about The Expendables franchise. That’s a film series that features such bits of dialogue as, “Why don’t you give the job to my friend here. He loves running around in the jungle.” Heck, they even throw in a Chuck Norris joke in the second movie. Though even those could get tiresome, in the third film they throw in a Wesley Snipes tax evasion joke.
What I'm saying is that it can be damning to your film if you want to expand and gain a bigger audience. But what do I know?
But anyway back to Furious 7. I think the biggest problem I have with the film is that it seems to lose focus on what it wants to do plot wise. We get a fairly good set up on the villain of the movie but he disappears throughout a good chunk of the movie and instead they focus on a story involving a computer hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel) and her special computer chip that is apparently God, it’s even called the God Chip. Deckard pop-ups every now and then disappears. It’s pretty much just “Hi Deckard,” action scene occurs, “Bye Deckard!” Speaking of Deckard, as I said, this guy was given one hell of a introduction but then afterwords what he does just kind of comes off as lackluster. Though Statham is excellent as always.
Referencing The Expendables in comparison again, their plots were very basic. First one - help rescue girl and take down a dictator. Second film - avenge a murdered friend. Third film - rescue friends and take down a former associate. Grant it the third one is the weakest with its over stuffing of actors. But they seem to know what they wanted to do, with this film it seems like they're trying to hard.
One of the other things that was testing my patience was the character Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson). I seriously couldn't stand this guy and I was baffled as to what he had to offer to the group. Grant it, I haven’t seen the other films but I still don’t know why this guy is involved. Every time this guy opened his mouth I just shouted in my head, “Shut up!” Even the more comedic characters in The Expendables franchise could at least fight in a battle scene, Gibson at one point wants to back out before the mission begins. Seriously?
Oh also, these guys were chosen by Kurt Russell's character, a special ops leader, to get the hacking chip and rescue the hacker. My question about this is: WHY?! I mean I can't think of a legitimate reason why you'd pick a bunch of guys who take part in illegal street racing for this stuff.
Also, the cars they use are just a bunch of souped up hot rods. Which I can't imagine being very useful in a non-racing mission. The only one who has a practical car is Chris Bridges, also known as LUDACRIS! By the way, Ludacris does a pretty good job in the movie as an actor. But the only one who seems suited to do this kind of thing is Paul Walker's character who is a former FBI agent (had to look that up).
One other plot element that bothered me was the fact that our "heroes" brought the final fight to the streets of Los Angeles. Keep in mind that they're not only bringing a very dangerous vengeance seeking assassin to Los Angeles, they're also bringing a heavily armed mercenary (Djimon Hounsou). His weapons include a helicopter with their regular weapons but also a drone that has mini-guns and missiles which take heavy damage on the buildings and probably killed a bunch of cops just doing their job.
But with all of that being said there were a few things that were rather good. The best performance was by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I can’t help but love this guy, he has the charisma and physical prowess to do these kind of action films. Kurt Russell was also really cool in the movie, though sadly he is way underused in the movie.
The other really good thing about the film is its tribute to Paul Walker. For those unaware, actor Paul Walker died in car crash during a break from filming the movie in 2014. Many of his scenes were left un-complete. So with Walker’s two lookalike brothers and stock audio of Paul they managed to complete his scenes and I couldn't tell the difference. So props to them.
In the final scene Vin Diesel gives a very touching speech about how he and Walker will always be brothers. It truly did show that Diesel and company really cared about their friend.
I can never claim to be a big Paul Walker fan, the only other film of his I've seen is Flags of Our Fathers (2006, dir. Clint Eastwood) where he played U.S. Marine Sgt. Hank Hansen, a Marine who was accidentally credited with raising the U.S. flag in the famous Iwo Jima picture and one that was killed during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
But even I can admit that they did a good job at paying tribute to the late actor. I also have to give them credit for having his character retire instead of just writing him out or killing him.
To conclude: This film, while having some good elements in them, didn't exactly win me over. If you’re a fan, chances are you’ve already seen, but none the less if you are a fan then this film will be satisfying to you.
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