Movie Review — 'Furious 7’ Blows Stuff Up Good
Posted by Ryan Sanderson on Friday, April 3, 2015 at 12:00 AM
By Ryan Sanderson / April 3, 2015
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What is the Fast and Furious franchise exactly? I mean what is it about? Pirates of the Caribbean is about pirates, for instance. You can say it’s about the characters, but I’d venture a guess that if Captain Jack Sparrow was, say, a lawyer or a dentist in the next film, that would probably throw some people. The Fast and the Furious, I thought at least, was' a movie about street racing. It was also a little bit about crime and a fairly obvious knockoff of Point Break, but that’s beside the point. You had the racers and family (Vin Deisel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, et al), you had the police (nobody anyone cares about), and you had Brian (the late Paul Walker), the undercover cop caught in the middle.
With Furious 7 what’s left of that original impetus? The seedy street photography and neon lights of the original have been phased out, replaced by a general sheen of blockbustery brightness and bigness. The outlaw racers are no longer outlaws or racers. They’re a globetrotting, crime fighting force that could easily be swapped in for the Mission Impossible gang or John Rambo in a pinch. They break into high security fortresses, hack military computers, jet set to exotic locales, and even save the world a time or two. There’s a brief racing sequence, but it could easily be cut with no impact to the plot whatsoever.
So I made a rough Venn diagram of every element in every film and narrowed them all down to three consistent qualities: muscular bald dudes, fast cars, and butts. That’s it. Gone is the sense of moral ambiguity. Gone is any consistent notion of gravity. I don’t think any of the main cast members have been in all seven films. I wonder if there’s a model out there whose cheeks have recurred in every entry to provide some continuity.
The new bad guy in this film is Jason Statham. I could look up his character’s name on IMDB but that would be more work than the writers did. He’s tough. He’s bad. He kills people. His motivation, equally straightforward, is to avenge his brother who was the bad guy in Fast 6. I don’t remember his name either. These movies wear simplicity like a badge of honor on their rippling pectorals, and I have to admit I’m getting it. Vague European Bad Guy with a Tank from Fast 6 had a plan that was so complicated it didn’t matter. Dark Transporter’s goals are so obvious I don’t have to spend any time thinking about them. Either way I don’t care, but the simplicity in this case cuts down on the dialog and makes room for a few more explosions. That’s what you call streamlining the product.
There’s a general sense of escalation throughout Furious 7. For instance, at one point our muscular, bald heroes have to break into a really fast super car guarded by golden butts. I’m not joking about that. That happens. Diesel’s Dominic Toretto meanwhile has conquered the laws of physics and capitalism not unlike Neo at the end of The Matrix. In the first film Toretto stole to provide for his family and looked concerned by a measly train. Now he drives million dollar cars off mountains and skyscrapers like a god who knows nothing in this world can hurt him. Granted on some level this is just realistic character work. After so many miraculous close calls over the last fifteen years, it makes sense that he finally just accepted he was invincible. His whole team, likewise, was scrappy before, but now they exhibit near-supernatural physical prowess. Brian, a modest ex-cop from LA, is going toe to toe with this guy. I was waiting for him to look at the camera and declare, with some surprise, “I know kung-fu!”

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