Escapism revved to the max
FURIOUS 7 Rating: ★★ ★ ★ out of 5 Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez Director: James Wan Running time: 137 minutes
Furious 7 commits its fair share of cinematic crimes. There’s its blatant disregard for the laws of physics ( cars can just fall from high in the sky without breaking apart under pressure? OK!), its striking rebuke of narrative logic ( of course the bad guys’ computer system can only be hacked if the good guys are within a certain range and constantly on the move, yes, sure) and its downright criminal underuse of both The Rock and Tony Jaa.
But despite these trespasses, or perhaps because of them, Furious 7 is incapable of being indictable: it’s pure popcorn escapism, brashly dumb and knowing at the same time. Like its central muscleheads, the movie is aware it’s breaking all the rules. It just doesn’t care.
Picking up from the coda of Fast & Furious 6, the new movie opens with British mercenary Deckard Shaw ( Jason Statham) vowing revenge against those crazy streetracing superheroes who took down his little brother Owen, the previous entry’s big bad guy.
To show that he means serious, mumbly British business, Deckard is introduced by calmly walking out of a military hospital he has destroyed just moments before, in what looks like an orgy of expository off- screen violence, and straight into a pristine sports car. It’s a riotous scene, and Statham’s calm rage gives the series, always weak in the antagonist department, a villain worthy of Vin Diesel’s fury.
Speaking of whom, we catch up with Diesel’s Mr. Clean of the Streets, Dominic Toretto, as he’s trying to shake loose some memories from one- time love Letty ( Michelle Rodriguez), who’s still suffering from that bout of amnesia she acquired in the franchise’s fourth entry.
Meanwhile, Dom’s spiritual brother and Los Angeles’s worst cop, Brian O’Conner ( Paul Walker), is struggling to adjust to domestic life after the highs of dragging a giant safe through the streets of Rio and destroying half of London.
And then, well … here’s the point where it could just become a game to list all the various and convoluted character threads. In short, just know that every member of Dom’s Justice League is struggling with their millionaire lives when Deckard declares war, leading them to join forces with a black- ops G- man ( Kurt Russell) who promises to help for a little quid pro quo.
The plot is just a MacGuffin- ized excuse for the film to deliver three extravagant, globetrotting set pieces, each more delightfully stupid than the last. There’s the aforementioned cars- in- the- sky scene in Azerbaijan, which is as bombastic as it sounds. Then a sequence in which a $ 3.5- million Lykan HyperSport supercar flies from the 100th floor of not one Dubai skyscraper, but two. And, finally, an all- out assault on downtown Los Angeles, in which a dozen cars, a helicopter and a drone deliver mayhem on a farcical level.
In between, there’s all manner of hand- to- hand combat — including what can only be described as a sword fight between Diesel and Statham, but with comically phallic wrenches instead of blades — and the requisite amount of “family” scenes, where Dom whispers sweet nothings to his crew, ensuring both his team and the audience that this series isn’t just about NOSfuelled madness, but lasting emotional bonds.
The Furious series has crafted a genuine emotional core to wrap around its miscreants, and it’s felt especially with this entry, which was only partly completed before Walker died in, yes, a car accident in 2013.
While Universal Studios has shrugged off questions about how exactly it ensured Walker’s character didn’t disappear halfway through the movie, whatever digital and practical work was done to keep Brian in the picture is near- flawless.