Furious Seven

And now, finally we come to the latest installment of the veritable action franchise with Furious Seven. Before I dig in to this latest action extravaganza I must say something. Back when Paul Walker died in November 2013, I found myself wondering if I'd ever want to watch one of these movies again. A lot of it had to do with how he died, as a passenger in a single car accident. I really felt like I had lost my desire to see them again. But as time heals and marched ever on, I got caught up in the hoopla surrounding the new movie and felt an overwhelming desire to revisit all of them. And now faithful reader, I will say that here at the finish line, the film ended just as it should have with a Brian O'Connor walking off into the sunset to be with the family he has built with Mia as the film finishes with a loving tribute to Paul Walker. It was touching and moving and I shed a few tears. 

Now that we have that elephant out of the room, we can focus on the actual plot and this movie has plenty of it. The film opens with villain du jour Deckard Shaw (played by Jason Statham), who we saw in the teaser at the end of Fast and Furious 6, standing in a hospital room pledging vengence to his comatose brother, Owen (played by Luke Evans), to the people who put him there. The camera then pans out and we see that Deckard has laid waste to much of the hospital. From there, Deckard begins tracking down the people who took out Owen and his crew, starting with Luke Hobbs (played by Dwayne Johnson). The two square off in one of two hand to hand fights that are impressive, intense and very smashy smashy (the other is Deckard vs. Dom, of course).  

Meanwhile, Dom (played by Vin Diesel) and the rest of his family learns of Han's death and realize they are being hunted. From here, we are introduced to a new character, a CIA spook going by the moniker Mr. Nobody (played by Kurt Russell). He says he's an old friend of the now hospitalized Hobbs and wants to make Dom and his crew an offer. There is a terrorist by the name Jakande (played by Djimon Hounsou) who has kidnapped a hacker known only as Ramsey (played by Nathalie Emmanuel) and wants to gain control of her program, called God's Eye. It's an impressive piece of software that can simultaneously search any camera, any microphone anywhere in the world to locate someone. Nobody makes an enticing offer, stating that if Dom and his crew can intercept Jakande and his crew, rescue Ramsey and retreive the God's Eye, he will in turn allow them to use the software and give them the resources to search for Deckard and go on the offensive to take him out once and for all. Dom accepts the deal and the team, including Roman (played by Tyrese Gibson), Letty (played by Michelle Rodriguez), and Tej (played by Chris "Ludacris" Bridges), come together to retrieve the God's Eye and take out Deckard.

Furious Seven once again ups the action quotient with a couple really wild sequences. The first has the gang parachuting in to a secluded mountain road, cars and all, to get a drop on Jakande's transport for Ramsey. It's such a wonderfully preposterous scene that is executed beautifully with moments I didn't quite expect, like Roman's parachute not disengaging right away, so for the first part you just see his car floating around on it's parachute in the background. The sequence ends with Brian trapped in the transport bus as it's about to go off the cliff. Even though it's been in the trailers, it's still a hair raising sequence as he climbs out and runs along the top, making it to the cliff edge just before it goes over the edge. The second big action sequence has Dom piloting an out of control sports car from a high rise penthouse to the neighboring tower, through that and then through a third tower while Brian desperately tries to retrieve the God's Eye chip from the car's on board computer. Both sequences are well executed and quite thrilling. They don't quite beat the Vault chase for me (which I guess has become the action sequence of this series on which all others will be judged now), but they came close.

James Wan takes over directing duties for this entry from series mainstay Justin Lin and by and large it has been a smooth transition. Chris Morgan once again scripts this entry in the series, crafting another great globe trotting adventure as well as giving us the series first really memorable villain, brought to life with serious menace by Jason Statham. Of course, the question on everyone's mind is how did the film handle finishing Paul Walker's unfilmed scenes. To be honest, aside from the final scenes it is really hard to tell what Paul Walker did or did not shoot. There are a couple sequences where I suspect a double was used, but for the most part it was impressively seamless. 

Overall, Furious Seven, is a very entertaining and fun entry in the series and while I will admit Fast Five is still my favorite of the series, this one is a very close second.