Big Screen :: The Fast & The Furious 7

April 15th 2015

FBi Radio

Furious-7

I drive a second (or maybe even third) hand station wagon, possessing a baby seat caked with mashed banana and soggy biscuit crumbs.

I don’t know what type of engine the car has or what year it was made, and you know what? I do not give one shit. I know that it is coloured grey, and I know that I can fill it up with fuel with reasonable success. This probably means that I’m not the target audience for Furious 7, but I’m going to review it anyway – so buckle up.

In number 7 of this series, Jason Statham plays an impossible badass who is trying to thin out the outrageously bloated cast of characters in the Furious saga, because they hurt his brother real bad in the last movie. He has already knocked off Han before the movie even starts, something which actually happened in the third film, because the fourth, fifth and sixth films were all prequels. (Yes, this is some complicated nonsense, so try and keep up.)

Anyway, these meatheads decide that they need a MacGuffin handed down from Kurt Russell to help them find Statham, despite the fact that he literally follows them around for the entire movie. Rather than chasing after him, they could just, you know, go out to dinner and they would probably find this guy. Whatever. They go off on a mission that involves skydiving and driving cars off of skyscrapers.

According to the Internet, this series has gone from a couple of semi-successful B movies to a throwaway third movie that was barely released, to a desperate attempt to resurrect two failed movie stars’ careers, to accidental meathead blockbuster masterpieces.

You know me. This sounds like the type of shit I can get behind, and believe me I keep trying but these movies just do nothing for me.

They remind me of those 70’s James Bond movies full of dumb posturing and desperate failed attempts to justify the set pieces that were conceived long before anyone thought to start writing a script. Furious 7 has some good action, but it is way, way too long and has a truly awful plot featuring some terrible performances. But everyone I talk to who loves these movies acknowledges all of this – and still loves them anyway. I feel like there is a dumb movie party going on and no one invited me. But hey, that’s OK, I’ll just hang out at my horribly racist 70’s James Bond party instead…

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(This is Sean Connery sharing my confusion about the Fast and the Furious saga while undercover as a Japanese man in You Only Live Twice…**)

They even cast the amazing Tony Jaa from Ong-bak and that awesome movie where he goes on a quest for vengeance on the Gold Coast because someone stole his elephant, and I was still bored.

That said, this movie has a fun built-in game for bored people – where you get to pick the stuff that Paul Walker actually shot, and the stuff where they ghoulishly painted his face onto his brother’s body to help them finish the movie after he died. Mostly it’s pretty seamless, though I suspect this script got significantly reworked on the fly, and there is a lot of not-really-Paul-Walker standing around in the background of scenes with a funny look on his face having one-sided conversations on the phone.

Well, enough. I’m going to keep trying with this Furious saga. Maybe I’ll finally get it by the time part eight rolls around.

** I once attempted this look for a politically-incorrect dress-up party thinking it would be funny, but it turns out that not many people have seen You Only Live Twice quite as many times as I have and I spent the entire night laboriously trying to explain myself. Not recommended.