Stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, Jordan Brewster, Jason Statham, Djimon Honsou, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky with Dwayne Johnson and Kurt Russell Directed by James Wan Despite most of the early poster listing it as “Furious 7” or the screen title being “Fast & Furious 7”, I’m sticking with the director preferred “Furious Seven”. They’re all the same movie anyway. Also, I like this fan-made poster over the official posters - and it's far more apt. So let’s tackle this as a movie first as it has some baggage attached, which I’ll address further below - after some warning. With a new director at the helm - James Wan stepping up after Justin Lin side-stepped the initially accelerated production schedule - the movie opens with a different feel, even as the cast credits accompany the movie’s title at the opening. It also hinted that there wasn’t going to be a post titles sequence at the end, nor a post credit sting so if you don’t feel like sitting through the credits, you’re not missing anything. Despite that, the movie wastes no time to set up our lead villain, one Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham on perma-glowering mode), brother of the previous bad-guy, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). Deckard is out for revenge, as we saw in the post titles sting at the end of the previous entry, which makes this seventh movie in the franchise to be set a little within the structure of number three before flying free of those odd shackles of having Tokyo “sometime in the future”. So, as Deckard goes on the hunt, he first goes mano-a-mano with Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), managing to take out the big guy while collecting his list of targets. This is then where Tokyo comes into the story (and the ending of part Six) just as he then sets his sights on Dom (Vin Diesel) and the rest of the gang. With Hobbs out of the way for now, in comes more covert assistance in the form of “Mr. Nobody” (Kurt Russell, always being awesome) who then puts Dom and crew to work to obtain a specialised surveillance MacGuffin, last seen in briefly similar fashion in The Dark Knight - handphones turned multi-point visual sonar - in order to track Deckard, who manages to turn up to disrupt their plans anyway. Along the way, they pick up some additional bad-guys for Deckard to use as disposable fodder for the real reason we return to these movies - the action scenes. Does all that sound too glib? I doubt plot is really the strong point for these movies but some props to writer Chris Morgan for making us care enough for the main cast of characters while emphasising the theme of family. And it works well enough for the most part to carry the movie and provide motivation for the characters to do what they are doing, even if Roman (Tyrese Gibson) gets to bring up the question of motivation. Wan manages the drama well enough, and has a deft hand with the action beats. There are at least four major brawls, three major vehicular mayhem set-pieces, with a couple more smaller beats, and one race, just to make sure the legacy is there.The action cam get pretty breathless, and laws of physics are occasionally thrown out the window. The visuals are stunning, the effects work well enough to occasionally question if the physical stunts were really done or not, and it’s always great to have Brian Tyler back on the score after sitting out the last one. The is pure guilty pleasure entertainment at its best with a massive helping of heart, and that is in part on how they had to deal with the passing of Paul Walker, and the treatment of his character, Brian O’Conner. So, a little spoiler warning here. . . Knowing the fate of Walker does raise expectations where the story and plot points are concerned, so much so that one very early story point raised may have seemed to be an out-clause for Brian. But then, watching the story unfold, knowing a little about the filming process with the “guest-stars”, particularly Tony Jaa’s mercenary, Kiet, and Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody, it becomes a little clearer how the rewriting process needed to be handled to fill in the gaps left to be filmed. Still, I couldn’t help feeling if Walker’s fate would have informed Brian’s fate, but it definitely raised the stakes for the character throughout. We would know if the franchise continues from this point, it would do so without Walker and his character, so no matter what, we are saying good-bye to both and while I don’t want to take how they handled it away from you… well, I won’t, but it was very well done and the seams barely show (they're there if you know what you're looking at). The franchise is what it is, and if you’re a fan, you’re watching it and nothing much is going to deter you. As a fan, you are well-served, and if this is the end (tho unlikely) it raises the bar once again, defying the diminishing returns that were originally predicted after the second or third outing. In all, the last few films found their particular groove to exist in and, in their own way, they have surpassed each other. In that sense, this could be seen as the best of the series, its heart on its sleeve and its core theme fully reinforced. Rating: **** /5
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December 2017
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