Speed up and slow down, speed up and slow down…
When I was learning to drive, my father took me out on the highway. After a few minutes, he told me that I drove like an old friend of his from high school. I would press the gas and get up to a certain speed and let off and slow down only to then press the gas again–ebb and flow. This method of driving annoyed him so much that he stopped riding in that friend’s car. “Furious 7” is just like that–an annoying friend whose car we’re just not gonna ride in anymore.
With the talent and resources available, you’d think that the team responsible for “Furious 7” would attempt to make a good movie. Heck, they might even have made a great one. Instead, this seventh sequel is lazy and annoying, devoid of any hint of what might have once made it interesting. But that is not to say that there aren’t exciting moments, it’s just that none of them add up to anything we care about. Watching the action sequences alone would be as satisfying as sitting through the entire 137 minutes of running time. And the saddest thing of all is that after seven films, the characters haven’t grown enough to make us worry about them as they careen recklessly through our city streets.
The ”Furious 7” story is, of course, about revenge. Deckard Shaw (played by Jason Statham) is out to get Dom (Vin Diesel) and his extended “family” for what they did to his brother in a former film. Deckard is a one-man killing machine. The opening sequence shows us what he is capable of, and it ain’t pretty. When one of their own is killed by Shaw and Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) lands in the hospital, Dom reunites his team and tries to turn the tables of Deckard. But when Deckard appears to have the upper hand, a shadowy government operative named Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) lends his support along with new improved cars. Yes, the story always comes down to a car, or should I say, “cars.”
Clearly, everyone involved knows how ridiculous the story is here, but this possibly last entry is cartoonish and not in a good way. Any jokes are really forced and the action sequences are supremely over-the-top (a car jumps between several buildings, a car attacks a helicopter, “The Rock” shoots a 50 caliber gatling gun on the streets of a heavily populated city, and on and on). Sadly, the fight scenes are poorly shot and make little real use of Statham’s excellent ballerina like fighting skills. Like the car chases, these fight scenes look like a video game crafted in a computer. One wonders whether the actors in the film were not able to convincingly sell the fight scenes, forcing the filmmakers to shoot them in a way that hides the identity of the combatants and masks choreography. Statham, the most interesting character in the movie, is wasted.
But the structure and pacing of “Furious 7” is its ultimate undoing. It revs up and then goes flat over and over. Michael Bay-style cinematography is employed in an attempt to keep things moving, but it proves to be annoying. Sure, when the absurd and laughable action sequences do drop in, the movie gets more entertaining, but cheesy melodrama kills any emotional connection we might have to the folks that are put in peril once the action starts up again.
Frustratingly, Vin Diesel isn’t very charismatic in the “iconic” role of Dominic Toretto. An actor who showed great promise with his moody masculine persona, Diesel has not expanded his acting skills beyond those delivered back in 2001 with the first of this popular series. He has a couple facial expressions, probably just exactly two. His razor voice is now a parody, an in-joke that makes viewers wince. And its sad when he appears on screen with Johnson and gets upstaged. Later, when Diesel faces off with Statham in a supreme smack-down, the physicality of their battle is undercut by camera work hiding the actor’s ability to keep up with Statham. It is really annoying, which sums up much of this seventh and hopefully last “Furious” entry.
It goes without saying that “Furious 7” is a critic-proof film. For the fans, and not for many of the critics who have long ago given up on the series, the movie ends with a loving tribute to Paul Walker, who tragically died in an unrelated car accident last year. And Walker’s career gets a fitting send off in that “Furious 7” will make more than $110 million this weekend in the United States alone. If only it could also have been a good movie. If only…