After defeating Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) and his crew in London, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew return to their home in Los Angeles, determined to leave their old lives behind and start anew. But when Owen's older brother Deckard (Jason Statham) kills one of their own, injures their friend Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), and begins hunting the rest of the team in order to get revenge, Dom and his crew must team up with a mysterious government agent (Kurt Russell) to take down Shaw and reclaim their lives.
Yes, there are a number of things that do not make any sense whatsoever, those things including:
- Owen Shaw somehow surviving getting thrown headfirst out of a moving airplane in the last movie.
- Cars being able to parachute out of a plane and landing gently on the ground.
- Driving a car out of one building, landing another building, crashing out of that building, and landing in yet another building.
- Hobbs being able to survive getting knocked out of the top floor of his office building by an explosion.
- Dom managing to hook a bag of grenades onto a helicopter while driving a car in the air.
- Dom and Shaw crashing into each other head on and surviving.
- Dom driving a car off of a cliff and surviving the fall.
- Hobbs being able to rip off the cast on his broken arm and taking down a helicopter with a minigun.
- Dom being able to cause a garage roof to crumble apart by stomping on it.
- And (no offense to the dead) Paul Walker beating Tony Jaa in a fight.
But despite all of those things, the movie ends up being so much fun and moving so fat that I don't care. The ensemble cast have a very strong chemistry with each other, and are able to take the most generic jokes and make them enjoyable. One particularly underrated standout is Kurt Russell, who chews up the scenery like crazy, and you can tell he is having the time of his life doing it. He has one line of dialogue towards the end of his screen time that had me in stitches and is probably the funniest line in the movie. And when the action kicks in, it REALLY kicks in.
Despite having mainly directed horror movies in the past (ex. Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring), James Wan turns out to be a very gifted action director. Despite this being a studio film, he still mages to add small things that make it feel like something he would have directed. In addition to flipping the camera during fight scenes (much like in The Conjuring), the opening scene (which is too awesome to describe in words, you have to see it for yourself) has multiple fast forwards that reminded me of the cinematography in Saw. And as stupid as some of the action sequences look in the trailer, he films them in a way that is exciting when they happen. The action in this film is Winter Soldier or Kingsman level awesome.
And now we get to the sad part of the review, where I discuss the untimely passing of Paul Walker and it's effect on the movie as a whole. As much as I have heard people complaining about how some of the effects used to recreate his face don't really work that well, I honestly didn't notice it. And, without spoiling any of it, they do find a way to keep him in the action in an interesting way, and the way they wrap up his story is heartfelt and sincere, and leaves you on the most positive note possible.
As someone who wasn't a fan of the franchise until recently (I rewatched all the others to be ready; the first is O.K., the second is unintentionally funny (but works if you watch it as a gay action movie), the third is nigh unwatchable, the fourth goes back up to O.K., the fifth is the first one i genuinely loved, the sixth is not quite as cool, but it's still highly entertaining), I think this might be my favorite so far. It's exciting, it's funny, it's sentimental in the right ways, and it leaves you feeling great, which is what I think a good blockbuster should do.
I give Furious 7 9 out of 10 tanks of Nitris Oxide or whatever goes into the engines.
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