Furious Seven
It was always going to be difficult to watch this seventh entry in the impossibly enduring “Fast & Furious” series without having to consider what the film might have been had it not been for the tragic death of Paul Walker in 2013, which shut down production mid-way through, and forced the filmmakers to figure out how to proceed without one of the franchise’s lead actors. Unlike other times when the death of a main actor clouded the final film (Heath Ledger and “The Dark Knight,” Brandon Lee and “The Crow”), there is always this sense that the film has been dramatically altered to deal with that new reality. And given how central Walker’s character, Brian O’Connor, is to the inner workings of the film’s story, it’s impossible to do a switch like what Terry Gilliam did after Ledger died during “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” without altering the fabric of the film’s reality significantly (and that’s saying something given how physics works in these films, at this point). (“The Hunger Games” has a similar issue after the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman during filming of “Mockingjay, Part 2.”) It’s a damn shame for everyone involved in this production that the first paragraph of this review is focused on such a difficult subject, but the entire movie, and our reaction to it, is informed by what happened to Walker, so it must be addressed. (Apparently, most of what we see in the film is, in fact, Walker’s work, with his brothers, and some CGI, filling in what remained. That doesn’t make it any easier to judge the film on it’s own terms.)
Let’s focus on the movie now. As with the previous three films, it is written by Chris Morgan, who somehow (in conjunction with director Justin Lin) developed a through line of a narrative that has each film leading directly to the next one rather than just being a series of otherwise unrelated events. In this film, the direct relation to “Furious 6” is how the chief bad guy in that film, Owen Shaw, has an older brother (Deckard Shaw, played by Jason Statham) who is mighty pissed at Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew for their acts against his brother, and wants vengeance. He starts by sidelining Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) before going to Tokyo to take out Han (Sung Kang), which we saw at the end of the previous film. After blowing up Dom’s house, with Brian and Mia (Jordana Brewster, given too little to do in this film) not far away with their young son in tow, the weight of their situation makes it impossible for the gang to not go after Deckard. Fortunately for them, an associate of Hobbs’s (a spook known only as Mr. Nobody, played by Kurt Russell in a welcome role) has a job that might give them access to a device that would make Shaw easily findable– a hacking program known as God’s Eye. This is where the craziness begins.
I started my reviews for the last two films in this franchise, “Fast Five” and “Furious 6,” by marveling at how engaged I’ve become in this series after not really being a fan after the first two entries, and I’m still marveled. I’m all in now, though, and that made me as heartbroken as anyone when Walker died in a car crash in November 2013, shortly before filming was to resume on this film. Walker wasn’t a great actor, but he was great in the role of O’Connor, especially when he was paired with Diesel’s Dom and Brewster’s Mia. One of the inspired things Morgan brought to the franchise was a solidifying of the theme of family being the most important thing in the world to the circle Dom and Brian are at the center of, and it took centerstage in the last two films, and does so again here. It doesn’t matter how much Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) take jabs at one another– they were die for the other, if needed. Han was devastated after Gisele (Gal Gadot) sacrificed herself to save him in the sixth film, which is why he needed to go to Tokyo, where they had talked about settling down together, and where Deckard Shaw takes him out. And the sixth film was all about Dom’s desire to bring Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), whom they thought was dead, back home after she is discovered as part of Owen Shaw’s team, and in this film, they are still trying to find that connection they had before. We believe the emotional bonds between these characters because they make us believe it. Given how insane the action gets in these films, having a core that is grounded in emotions is central, which is why the “Lethal Weapon” series worked, and “Fast and the Furious” learned that lesson at just the right time– the last three films in the series have been the best, and even if there are absurdities in the larger story that’s being told that hold “Furious Seven” back (a lot of it based around Statham’s character, and his uncanny ability to always be where the crew is), emotionally, the film works in the end. (And especially at the end. I’m not going to discuss it in detail, but the last several minutes are unexpectedly devastating as the characters say goodbye to Brian, and Vin Diesel says goodbye to his brother in this series, Paul Walker. They get this right in the best way, and is worth watching the movie for alone.)
The director of the franchise since 2006’s “Tokyo Drift,” Justin Lin, stepped down to do other things, and while it was an unfortunate loss given how brilliantly he managed the series in his tenure, it’s great that we’ll get different types of movies from him in the future, and was able to bring a new voice to this series. That voice was James Wan, the director of “Saw,” “Insidious” and “The Conjuring,” and if you’re thinking that’s quite a left turn, I don’t blame you. It was also inspired, as Wan has grown ever more confident over the years, and that confidence spills over into his work on “Furious Seven.” The set pieces in this film follow in the scope of what we’ve seen in films five and six, and it’s ridiculously cool to watch as Dom and co. drive out of a plane and hit the ground running to take down a convoy with the hacker (Ramsey, played by Nathalie Emmanuel) who created the God’s Eye program that serves as this film’s McGuffin, or have to infiltrate a Jordanian prince’s party on the top floor’s of an Abu Dhabi hotel, and find a way to get away in a car from 80 stories up (hint– not easily). Wan understands his way around the set pieces, and he does a great job delivering on the type of fun insanity that Lin became a master at orchestrating. The only part that feels off is the big, multi-faceted climax in Los Angeles, because between the drone chasing the characters and the implausibility that allows a key character to somehow survive a collapsing parking garage, it’s a little too ridiculous, even by this series’s generous standards.
The more I’ve thought about “Furious Seven” in the past couple of days, the more clearly I see why I enjoyed it, and why it’s disappointing after the fifth and sixth films. The latter comes from not just the sometimes too insane (even for this franchise) narrative choices, and the constant guessing game I found myself playing, trying to figure out how they changed the story after Paul Walker’s death, and what scenes and moments were Walker, and which were his brothers and CG-wizardry. The former is most of the rest of the film: that ending; the action scenes; Vin Diesel’s commitment to this film’s themes; Kurt Russell; Jason Statham; and Michelle Rodriguez, who has some of the best moments in the film as Dom and Letty try and rebuild their relationship. In a way, I’d like to see Universal and co. retire this franchise while it’s at the top of it’s game, but if they do continue, I’ll be right there with it, waiting to see where they take it from here.
