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Never in a million years would I expect to see myself
calling a Fast and Furious movie the
best of its year so far. Yet, here we are. You could attribute this to the lack
of good movies that have come out in these past three months, or you could
attribute it to its unmatchable sense of fun. I choose both. For the record,
this is my first Fast and Furious
movie, and to be honest, it’s made me want to go out of my way to see more
movies in the franchise.
Furious 7 pits a
ruthless British criminal, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), against a team of
professional street racers with experience forking for the government. The
group consists of Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker), Letty (Michelle
Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), and Agent Hobbs (The Rock).
Deckard wants to avenge the death of his brother following the events of the
previous film, and teams up with Mose (Djimon Hounsou) to steal an incredibly
powerful tracking program from a hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel). The good guys team
up for one last ride to save their lives, their families, and put a stop to
Shaw.
The movie knows how to let its viewers have fun in the
theater, even though it sometimes crosses the fine line of ridiculous fun and
unbelievably absurd impossibility. If you thought dropping a half dozen cars
out of an airplane onto a windy mountain road in another continent, landing
them, and then driving them along said mountain in an insane chase scene to the
point where Paul Walker ends up climbing out of a bus as it is falling off a
cliff, then running up that bus to grab onto Michelle Rodriguez’s bumper as she
drifts along the edge of the cliff couldn’t be made into a prolonged,
irrevocably entertaining, 20-minute action scene, the you’d be completely
wrong.
Yet sometimes, these scenes aren’t as fun, entertaining, or
feasible. Specifically, when Vin Diesel survives falling off both a cliff and a
dilapidated parking garage through the power of love, when The Rock is blown out
of a glass window by a grenade, falls four stories, and concaves a car unscathed,
or when Jason Statham is slammed in the face by The Rock’s Texas-sized elbow
and shakes it off like it was a tree branch, I found it a chore not to mutter
“bull$#!t” under my breath.
Yet despite these moments of absurdity and a final chase
scene that seemed to lose itself towards the end, Furious 7 is 2015’s best movie so far, and among the most fun movies
I’ve seen in theaters in a long time. It’s emotional, action-packed, and
contains enough context so that Fast and
Furious first timers can enjoy themselves as well.
While Vin Diesel’s prediction that Furious 7 will win Best Picture at the Oscars is a bit bold, it
doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be supporting these kinds of movies. It’d be
stupid to say there aren’t better action movies as this, because there
definitely are, but when action movies work as well or better than Furious 7, they’re the shining examples
of why we go to the movies in the first place. It has its imperfections, but Furious 7’s full-throttle levels of
testosterone that seem to exude from the screen to the audience are enough
reasons to go see the movie. The substance is what’s worth staying for.
Rating: 3.5/5
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