‘Furious 7’: Still fast, still furious, still unrealistic
DYLAN BROCKMEYER
ASST. A&C EDITOR
@dbrock08
The crew returns for more cars, girls and fights than ever before.
Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Ride or die. The iconic catch phrase that made the “Fast and Furious” franchise famous might finally be approaching cliche. The seventh installment in the movies premiered on April 3, 2015 and has grossed $800.5 million worldwide in its second week according to a report in The Guardian. “Fast & Furious 7” marks a best for the series.
This movie features characters from across the movie franchise, including cast members from “Tokyo Drift,” in addition to well-known personalities such as Kurt Russell, Djimon Hounsou and Nathalie Emmanuel.
In “Fast & Furious” style, the entire movie is bad one-liners and ridiculous stunts with flying cars, large explosions and over-the-top fight scenes. And they didn’t skimp on the girls, engines, Coronas or soundtrack. But as fans of the franchise know, that’s the whole reason to go see the movies. There was never more than five minutes of just dialogue or dramatic acting, and even when you thought there could be some significant plot development, suddenly there was an explosion or an all out brawl.
“Furious 7” picks up right where “Fast & Furious 6” left off. The last installment had a surprise ending revealing Jason Statham, normally a hero in the action movie world, as a villain with a craving for vengeance.
Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) crew is back in Los Angeles trying to slide back into to a more domestic lifestyle. Not wasting any time to get right to the action, the first scene in the movie is a race at the desert grounds that Toretto and Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) started. Toretto is attempting to help Ortiz regain her memory so she feels more at home with her crew.
Mia Toretto and Brian O’Connor (Jordana Brewster and Paul Walker) are living with Dom and raising their new son Jack. Brian is trying to adjust to the dad lifestyle, but as in frequently mentioned throughout the movie he misses the bullets.
In the last bit of tying up loose ends from the last film, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) breaks into Luke Hobbs’ (The Rock) computer to find the files on everyone in Toretto’s crew who took part in taking out his little brother Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). Cue outrageous fight scene.
Watching The Rock fight Jason Statham is wildly entertaining. Statham remains a class act while The Rock uses brute force and large punches. They throw each other through windows and manage to break every single piece of furniture in the entire room.
The rest of the fight scenes in the movie follow along the same lines. There is ridiculous amounts of throwing, kung fu, punching, kicking, running and flipping off walls and all accompanied by snarky little remarks. Toretto, O’Connor and The Rock all seem to try their best with the small amounts of bad dialogue they’re given, but even a well experienced actor like Statham struggled to make the delivery believable.
“Furious 7” takes the suspension of disbelief to a whole new level for the audience. Besides the truly impossible stunts between cars and people, the mere fact that basic runners or hoodlums from the streets of Los Angeles would be included and specifically requested for government attempts to quell terrorist attacks is egregious. There were also obvious fight scenes, and one in particular where Shaw was crushed by tons of concrete slabs of rubble, where someone should have died.
The most touching, real and believable moment of the entire movie was easily at the end. “Furious 7” concluded with a tribute to Paul Walker; many of his famous scenes and smiles were strung together with a Vin Diesel voice over how Walker was and always would be a true brother. In the very last scene of the movie, Walker and Diesel take two separate exits at an intersection. Walker exits the main road while Diesel drives on, the screen flashes bright white with two words on screen “For Paul.”