Furious 7
Year: 2015
Director: James Wan
Starring: Vin Diesel, Nathalie Emmanuel, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson, Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham & Paul Walker
Runtime: 137 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 09/02/22
Director: James Wan
Starring: Vin Diesel, Nathalie Emmanuel, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson, Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham & Paul Walker
Runtime: 137 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 09/02/22
The Fast Saga may have gotten off to a rocky start with the first four films getting a mixed to negative critical reception, but the fifth and sixth entries to the series upped the ante in every conceivable way and produced some entertaining, check your brain at the door, stupid fun films that restored faith in the series and positioned it as Universal’s biggest franchise. The seventh instalment was to be no different, with bigger stunts, crazier action, and more dramatic speeches by Vin Diesel about family. But there were a number of roadblocks and setbacks that befell Furious 7’s production and many feared it may not successfully carry the torch from the previous two entries and potentially even spell the end of the series entirely. But Furious 7 pulled through and became the most critically and commercially successful Fast Saga film up to that point. So now all the hype has died down, is Furious 7 actually as great as people said it was, or is it a case of audiences allowing emotions cloud their judgment?
The end of Fast & Furious 6 revealed that Han’s (Sung Kang) death in Tokyo Drift was actually caused by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of 6’s antagonist Owen. Furious 7 picks up from here as Shaw mounts an offensive on Dom (Vin Diesel) and the rest of his team, even taking on Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and hospitalising him. Beaten and broken, Dom, Brian (Paul Walker), Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) must team up with Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), a colleague of Hobbs’, to track down Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), a hacker who has created a surveillance program that will allow them to track down Shaw and get revenge for what he has done to them.
The end of Fast & Furious 6 revealed that Han’s (Sung Kang) death in Tokyo Drift was actually caused by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of 6’s antagonist Owen. Furious 7 picks up from here as Shaw mounts an offensive on Dom (Vin Diesel) and the rest of his team, even taking on Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and hospitalising him. Beaten and broken, Dom, Brian (Paul Walker), Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) must team up with Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), a colleague of Hobbs’, to track down Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), a hacker who has created a surveillance program that will allow them to track down Shaw and get revenge for what he has done to them.
Furious 7’s plot does at times feel like the writers just threw a load of generic action movie tropes at a wall and saw what stuck then just wrote the script around that. It’s coherent enough to be able to follow what’s going on, but it’s perhaps the most braindead story in the Fast Saga so far. It funnels you from action sequence to action sequence with not a lot of room left for story in between, which considering we’re seven films in with almost entirely the same cast members is understandable, I mean how much further can we really take these people emotionally? I loved Ramsey and she’s a great addition to the team, but because of how the film is written she doesn’t get much time to show us who she is, more just what she can do.
Letty is given a decent amount of emotional development, perhaps more than any of the other characters, and it’s because she can’t remember the life she used to have with Dom. So, the two of them, mostly at the start of the film, have time to try and rebuild their relationship. The story also introduces the idea of Brian struggling with the mundanity of fatherhood and family life, with him needing to choose between being a father and being an action hero. I don’t feel it’s handled very well because he doesn’t actually make any choices, not does he ever bring up his struggle, it’s always other people who address it for him.
The film looks distinct from the previous few Fast Saga films though and that’s down to Justin Lin having stepped down as director for this film, with James Wan (of Saw, The Conjuring & Insidious fame) at the helm. It’s weird seeing a director who has almost exclusively worked with horror take charge of a massive blockbuster action film like Furious 7, because there’s almost none of Wan’s usual stylings in it. But it is nice to see things from a different point of view than Lin’s, who despite having done wonders for the series, could have potentially made Furious 7 stale if he had simply followed the formula established in the previous two films.
The CGI looks a bit crappy at times though, which I found surprising because the Fast Saga films had usually done CGI relatively well for the times they were made. There are dozens of times in Furious 7 when I felt the special effects looked cheap, unfinished, or simply out of place. It’s a shame too as they do hold the film back from the visual spectacle achieved in the previous two films, because it’s now so obvious that so much of the action is fake.
Letty is given a decent amount of emotional development, perhaps more than any of the other characters, and it’s because she can’t remember the life she used to have with Dom. So, the two of them, mostly at the start of the film, have time to try and rebuild their relationship. The story also introduces the idea of Brian struggling with the mundanity of fatherhood and family life, with him needing to choose between being a father and being an action hero. I don’t feel it’s handled very well because he doesn’t actually make any choices, not does he ever bring up his struggle, it’s always other people who address it for him.
The film looks distinct from the previous few Fast Saga films though and that’s down to Justin Lin having stepped down as director for this film, with James Wan (of Saw, The Conjuring & Insidious fame) at the helm. It’s weird seeing a director who has almost exclusively worked with horror take charge of a massive blockbuster action film like Furious 7, because there’s almost none of Wan’s usual stylings in it. But it is nice to see things from a different point of view than Lin’s, who despite having done wonders for the series, could have potentially made Furious 7 stale if he had simply followed the formula established in the previous two films.
The CGI looks a bit crappy at times though, which I found surprising because the Fast Saga films had usually done CGI relatively well for the times they were made. There are dozens of times in Furious 7 when I felt the special effects looked cheap, unfinished, or simply out of place. It’s a shame too as they do hold the film back from the visual spectacle achieved in the previous two films, because it’s now so obvious that so much of the action is fake.
It’s impossible to talk about Furious 7 with addressing the elephant in the room, and the main cause for the film’s delay, Paul Walker’s untimely death. Walker died early in the filming process for Furious 7 and so production on the film was halted for approximately four months. During this time the story was completely re-written to accommodate stand-in’s for Walker, with any close ups then having his face grafted onto the actor in his place via CGI.
I have a feeling that the re-writes are what caused me to have issues with the films story not having the same kind of emotional depth that the other Fast Saga films have; I mean even the other films are quite shallow emotionally, but Furious 7 takes it to a new level with just how emotionless everything is. There is one exception to this though and that’s the final scene in the film which serves solely as a tribute to Walker, and gives a small amount of closure to the character of Brian who understandably won’t be returning in any major capacity for the future films in the series. However I take issue with these scene because it doesn’t feel like a natural part of the film, it feels so tacked on and almost feels like a series recap instead of a genuine heartfelt farewell to the man who arguably made these films as good as they are. I’m sure for some it’ll get the waterworks flowing, but for me it felt like an afterthought, and kind of insulting that they couldn’t find a way to organically work it into the film.
Furious 7 is a mixed bag to be honest. It doesn’t achieve the same greatness as Fast Five or F&F6 because the story lacks those emotional moments, and the CGI looks so weird. But Furious 7 is still an enjoyable film for those who are looking for dumb action spectacle and want to turn their brains off. I feel like the praise it received around the time of release was likely a result of Walker’s death and not truly reflective of the actual quality of the film, because whilst there are worse action films out there it just simply doesn’t match up against many of the other films in the Fast Saga.
I have a feeling that the re-writes are what caused me to have issues with the films story not having the same kind of emotional depth that the other Fast Saga films have; I mean even the other films are quite shallow emotionally, but Furious 7 takes it to a new level with just how emotionless everything is. There is one exception to this though and that’s the final scene in the film which serves solely as a tribute to Walker, and gives a small amount of closure to the character of Brian who understandably won’t be returning in any major capacity for the future films in the series. However I take issue with these scene because it doesn’t feel like a natural part of the film, it feels so tacked on and almost feels like a series recap instead of a genuine heartfelt farewell to the man who arguably made these films as good as they are. I’m sure for some it’ll get the waterworks flowing, but for me it felt like an afterthought, and kind of insulting that they couldn’t find a way to organically work it into the film.
Furious 7 is a mixed bag to be honest. It doesn’t achieve the same greatness as Fast Five or F&F6 because the story lacks those emotional moments, and the CGI looks so weird. But Furious 7 is still an enjoyable film for those who are looking for dumb action spectacle and want to turn their brains off. I feel like the praise it received around the time of release was likely a result of Walker’s death and not truly reflective of the actual quality of the film, because whilst there are worse action films out there it just simply doesn’t match up against many of the other films in the Fast Saga.