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My one criticism about Furious 7âweâll leave the filmâs physics to nerdier criticsâis that it peaks about an hour early.
The Fast & Furious films became incredible once they fully embraced their own stupidity. Furious 7's central chase scene is as frantic and ludicrous as action scenes get (hell, it features Ludacris!), and ranks among the best in the series. With cars parachuting directly into a chase, martial artist Tony Jaa kicking ass in a speeding vehicle, blazing machine guns, flying bodies and breakneck crashes, the central sequence is virtually unstoppable.
That doesnât mean that the rest of the film suffers though. Hell, the second half of Furious 7 includes a brutal fight between Michelle Rodriugez and MMA star Ronda Rousey, a high-altitude car chase across the top floors of three skyscrapers, a weird futuristic jet, and Dwayne âThe Rockâ Robinson flexing his sinewy bicep so hard that he breaks a goddamned plaster cast on it.
Since the films rebooted themselves in 2011, each minute has topped the last. The 2001 original was basically a remake of Point Break that ditched surfboards for muscle cars. A few shitty sequels later, it seemed dead in the waterâuntil Fast Five reinvented the series as a hybrid of Oceans 11, Vanishing Point, the Bond series and a deranged bull loaded up on PCP.
This time around, the McGuffin is a hacker the team must rescue from a group of well-funded terrorists led by Djimon Hounsou. But the real fun is Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw, the brother Fast & Furious Six's villain/roadkill, who randomly pops into chase scenes like a Looney Tunes villain and blows things up. The beefed-up Brit is the most cartoonish thing in a movie steeped in cartoon logic, and heâs a blast.
Also, Kurt Russell shows up.
But Furious 7 stands out from the mouth-breathing pack of summer blockbusters by wearing its big, oversized heart on its bulging sleeve. Sure, the trademarks here are street-races, property damage, oogled women, even-more-oogled biceps and explosions. But sentimentality runs deep, often mistaken for the rampant homoeroticism that made source material Point Break so special. Peppered with Dieselâs incomprehensible grumblings about the importance of family, this is a series of brotherly love. And itâs oddly affecting, even when delivered at 120 miles per hour.
The sentimentality is even more touching because star Paul Walker tragically died before wrapping the film (in a high-speed car wreck, no less). His death looms large, especially as his character is in constant peril and his brothers filled in as body doubles, The entire film seems like an over-the-top wake for Walker, with a final sequence commemorating the actor. Hell, when I die, I hope somebody collapses a skyscraper in my honor.
WWeek 2015