And I mean stupid in the best way possible.
The common refrain about The Fast and the Furious franchise is one needs to "turn off their brain" and just enjoy the cars, women, and action. To a certain degree, that's true. These are most definitely not movies defined by their gritty realism, or art house films concerned with the esoteric qualities of the human condition. But neither are the James Bond and Star Wars franchises, which also require not thinking too hard about certain aspects of the plot, and fostering a suspension of disbelief.
Arguably, the fair way to judge something like this is on the level of what it aspires to be and whether it achieves that mark in an enjoyable way. For example, the discography of Rick James is not filled with tracks that are particularly "deep" in introspection about social issues. And they're not intended to be. They're songs about very kinky girls, cold-blooded women, and "Mary Jane" to a funk bass groove. And if that's your thing, it works. With the Fast and Furious films, they're silly, ridiculous and preposterous. But, as a movie viewing experience, the franchise embraces awe and spectacle to create a fun popcorn action movie, and Furious 7 is probably the most fun I've seen an audience have with a film all year.
Delayed almost a year in order to rework the story and insert digital trickery given the death of actor Paul Walker, Furious 7 ups the ante and stakes but also has to strike a tonal balance. The result is enjoyable, but doesn't reach the kinetic heights of some of the movie's predecessors.
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This is probably one of the strangest film franchises, since I don't think anyone involved—not the actors, the producers, or the studio—ever expected it to go in this direction or turn into something this successful when it started 14 years ago, grossing more than $3 billion. Along the way, we've gotten creative titling (i.e., 2 Fast 2 Furious), a complex series chronology, an 18-mile long runway, and pulling a bank vault through the streets of Brazil like a mace.
The first movie in the series was basically a
ripoff of Point Break with street racing, and did well but was not anything special. By the third film,
Tokyo Drift, the series was edging close to direct-to-DVD territory. Except the director they brought in, Justin Lin, reworked the series as a cross between
Ocean's Eleven heist movies and
Mission: Impossible-esque action sequences as imagined by a kid with a Hot Wheels playset. The result is a franchise where each movie has become an event, with
Furious 7 earning
$147.2 million this weekend domestically, $392.2 million worldwide, and will probably add another $1 billion to the franchise's total gross when all is said and done.
Lin also started building an ensemble that has grown with each film. And these films are part of the tendency toward serialization among big budget, studio tent-pole movies, where they're basically built to function as soap operas, where each installment builds on the one that preceded it. And with the Fast and Furious franchise, it basically tells physics to go fuck itself as much as any Marvel superhero movie. Just like the Marvel movies, part of the appeal is seeing the interactions and chemistry of these characters with action genre stars, whether it be Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock), Tony Jaa, Ronda Rousey or Jason Statham. In its own way, this is a superhero franchise without superheroes. And with Furious 7, it could probably be called Fast and Furious versus The Transporter.
The plot (if you want to call it that) for
Furious 7 is a tad convoluted and bloated to say the least. Carrying over from the ending of
Fast and Furious 6, as well as elements of
Tokyo Drift, Deckard Shaw (Statham) has murdered Han (Sung Kang), put Hobbs (Johnson) in the hospital, and plans to avenge his brother (the previous movie's villain, played by Luke Evans) by killing the rest of Dom's (Vin Diesel) crew—Brian (Walker), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), tech guy Tej (Ludacris)—and family. While this is happening, a terrorist (Djimon Hounsou) has taken a hacktavist (Nathalie Emmanuel) captive in order to control the "God's Eye," which can detect and monitor anyone anywhere on Earth. A black-ops agent called Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) offers Dom's team a deal. He will give them access to equipment and help hunt Shaw down if the team will rescue the hacker and the God's Eye.
All of this is to say, the plot really doesn't matter. It's a means to an end, which allows the production to span Tokyo, Azerbaijan, London, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi and the Dominican Republic, while setting up elaborate car sequences and brawls where Vin Diesel can hold giant wrenches. This is Chris Morgan’s fifth time writing a film for this franchise, and it seems that with each one he finds even more ridiculous ways for cars to fly through the air. But the sequences are fun roller-coaster rides because of the relationships and tone that's been built over the previous four movies, and they deliver.
From Alex Abad-Santos at
Vox:
Start with the film's globetrotting ways. The Middle East features camels and women strutting around to bumping, vaguely Arabic trap music. Tokyo is all neon glow and women strutting around to bumping, vaguely Asian trap music. There's not much the world can agree on in Furious 7, except for trap music.
One big change for
Furious 7 is the man in the director's chair, James Wan (
Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring). And, to his credit, the action is clear and coherent. One is never left wondering who's onscreen and what's happening, which a lot of action movies suffer from in jump-cut editing. But with its 2+ hour run-time,
Furious 7 is overstuffed and has problems keeping the narrative focused. Both Statham and Johnson disappear for big stretches, and Hounsou is relegated to mostly looking badass and screaming at lackeys.
And then there's the issue of how Paul Walker's death is handled for the film. Walker died in a car accident in late 2013, and reportedly 85 percent of his scenes had been completed. Rewrites and the use of doubles (in this case Walker's brothers, Cody and Caleb) with digital effects allowed the movie to be completed, and for the most part it's unnoticeable. But the film confronts this reality in its final moments, where the characters aren't saying goodbye to Walker's character as much as they are to him. The movie completes an arc, and I could hear tears being shed in the audience as a "For Paul" title card ended the film.
- Furious 7 Audience 75 Percent Non-White: According to the stats compiled over the weekend by Universal, the demographics for Furious 7 was 37 percent Hispanic, 25 percent Caucasian, 24 percent African American, 10 percent Asian and 4 percent "other." This series is notable for being one of the few big budget blockbuster franchises with a diverse cast, and a majority of non-white characters. And also of note, even with a lot of dancing women in thongs and booty shorts, Furious 7 actually passes the Bechdel test.
- Compared To Transformers: Furious 7 is currently sitting at 83 percent over at Rotten Tomatoes. There's been a bit of a backlash where some have wondered why the Fast and Furious series generally has a feeling of goodwill from its audience that overlooks plot holes to watch things blow up, where something like Michael Bay's Transformers films are critically reviled and seen as giant product placement commercials. Even though both series make a lot of money, the difference in audience attitudes between the two proves there can be differences between action movies that blow things up. And there's a difference in tone, with Bay's films just not being as fun as these are. The last Transformers movie was almost 3 hours long. And unless you had kids that really wanted to see it, the movie was just a slog to sit through.
- Only 7 In The World: The red car seen in all the commercials for Furious 7 jumping between skyscrapers is a Lykan Hypersport. Created by Dubai-based W Motors, only 7 have ever been produced and each cost $3.4 million. The car sports a 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six which produces 770 hp and 708 ft.-lb torque that achieves 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. The vehicle's lights are made out of white gold, diamonds, and blue sapphire.
- Theoretically Possible: According to a physicist contacted by Vulture, given the performance capabilities of the Lykan Hypersport and the distance and angles between the Etihad Towers, it might actually be possible to jump the car between skyscrapers.
“To be honest,” says Professor Loveridge, “that is probably the most plausible stunt in the whole movie.”
- Real Cars Were Dropped From Real Planes: According to NPR, the production actually did drop vehicles with parachutes out of a C-130 in order to work out the logistics behind tossing cars out of a flying airplane.
- Fast and Furious 8?: In an interview with Variety, Vin Diesel was predicting a Best Picture win for Furious 7 and arguing that if they didn't take home the statue it would be another sign of the Academy's irrelevance. Pigs flying is more likely than this film even getting nominated. But will there be another one? Is a Fast and Furious 8 possible? I won't spoil the ending of this film, but it is set up where elements from it can come back in the future. And Diesel, who's a producer, has hinted an eighth installment might film in China and New York and revolve around Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody. Given the amount of money this movie is making, it's almost a given Universal will greenlight another film. And director James Wan has stated in interviews the original ending of the movie, before Walker's death, set up a continuation of the franchise.
Wan: The original ending of Furious 7 was setting up, you know, the bigger world of where the Fast and Furious franchise could go into. And that’s obviously very smart of them to think so. But when the tragedy happened, all of that became irrelevant. So it did not matter anymore, all of that stuff. And to the studio’s credit, they did not push for that. They realized how important it was to make a movie that finishes and that just outright is a tribute to Paul Walker. So I give them a lot of credit for being bigger than that and going along with this ending that is the right ending to go with.