Furious 7 – Film Review

After defeating international terrorist Owen Shaw, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), and the rest of the crew have separated to return to more normal lives. However, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), Owen’s older brother, is thirsty for revenge. A slick government agent offers to help Dom and company take care of Shaw in exchange for their help in rescuing a kidnapped computer hacker who has developed a powerful surveillance program.

As soon as I kicked off this Fast and Furious movie marathon a few weeks ago now, I knew that once I grew attached to all of these characters, especially Brian O’Conner, that watching Furious 7 was going to be a difficult task. Not because I thought it was going to be a bad movie or anything, but because it marks the final film appearance of the late Paul Walker, who tragically passed away in a car accident, all while the film was still undergoing production.

When this happened, not only were fans of his completely shocked but the cast and crew of the franchise echoed that sentiment. His passing came as a complete surprise and was met with millions of tributes online. To this day I think that Walker’s death is deeply upsetting and I can only hope that he is happy in a better place right now.

And since Walker passed while he was filming Furious 7, it left the cast and crew in a bit of a dilemma. Technically Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto is the lead of the series, but Walker is right behind him on that. So naturally, the filmmakers had to come up with a natural and satisfying way to deal with the situation and they made the wise decision to not kill his character off in some dumb way that wouldn’t have made sense for his character.

I don’t want to spoil the ending in case you haven’t seen the film yet but what they did with his character was not only incredibly fitting but it was extremely emotional, and I found myself sitting in my chair with tears streaming down my cheeks. Furious 7 handles Walker’s untimely death in a truly powerful way.

But how is the rest of the film? It’s actually pretty great for the most part. It was clear about thirty minutes in that by this point in the series, the filmmakers have simply stopped caring just how insane and over-the-top the stunts are. There are some scenes here that are certainly going to make some viewers roll their eyes and I can see why, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but watch these zany action sequences with a gigantic smile on my face. There’s one scene in particular with Diesel and Walker that sees them driving a fancy car through various different skyscrapers. It’s the definition of insane and completely unrealistic but that’s kind of what I love about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love how the action was handled in Fast Five, which is still my favorite installment in the series to date. That movie actually did a surprisingly good job at making the action and chase sequences as realistic as possible while still being highly entertaining and it actually had a really strong story too. The story in Furious 7 isn’t groundbreaking by any means but it’s certainly a lot of fun to follow.

I think that’s what’s so beautiful about Fast and Furious in general – they are insanely over-the-top and nonsensical but the filmmakers actually understand this and they use it to their advantage. With each passing installment, everything gets zanier and zanier and it’s a ton of fun to watch what crazy stunts they will do next.

If you don’t personally enjoy this series, I can totally understand why. It’s certainly not for everyone, but at the same time, there are a lot of people that genuinely adore seeing the adventures of Dominic Toretto and crew, and I am one of those people. Even in some of the lesser installments, I have fun and although there is going to be one too many entries in the future here, as long as that sense of fun and self-awareness is present, I’m sure I’ll have a ton of fun.