Movie Review - Furious 7 (2015)

[Dave Gray]

Furious 7 (2015)

Premise: An international assassin seeking revenge uses a surveillance tool to lure a heist team back into action.

Rating: Finally, too much is too much.

This was my breaking point.  This story is so convoluted and hard to understand and non-sensical that it may as well not exist.  And I'm OK with that, but the movie is now about two hours and twenty minutes and there is so much going on -- soooooo many characters to balance, stories to tie up, things to explain.  It's just all too much.

There is the ever-growing heist team.
There are law enforcement, led by The Rock.
There is this crime syndicate, led by this African dude, but also linked somehow to Jason Statham, though I'm not really sure.  (These may be separate groups.)
There is some other mystery group, led by someone called "Mr. Nobody".
And then there is some Arab prince and his private security forces.

I literally can't follow the story, but more importantly, I don't care -- none of it matters, the action is paramount, and stakes don't have any meaning.  Which IS ALL OK, but don't keep me for 2 hours 20 mins with bullshit exposition.

This series already struggles because you have to find ways to incorporate a growing list of characters and you have to find ways to get them in cars, when it really doesn't apply to the situation.  This zit has popped.

The action is still increasingly crazier, but it's gone back to CG, so it's less interesting.  The cars are literally jumping from building to building in skyscrapers and that can't be filmed practically.  I don't really know what it is about the action in this movie that finally put me over the edge, but the indestructability of the characters, I think, might be something relatively new -- or at least at this level.  Our characters used to narrowly escape death in ridiculous ways....call it luck.  They would just barely miss the carnage.  They don't even miss anymore.  They face the carnage head on.  But here, they just don't die when they should.  There are multiple head-on collisions, on purpose, that would absolutely kill you.  Cars fly off cliffs and crash...and nobody gives a shit..they just crawl out the window.  It's a weird criticism to lay at the feet of a series that has gone to leaps and bounds to throw realism out the window, but at some point, there aren't stakes.  What's the danger in racing around cliffs if you can survive the fall anyway?

If you're trying to actually follow the heist-plan (don't), it doesn't make any sense.  They're avoiding drone strikes by passing a woman through car windows as they pass each other, at racing speed, while drifting.  The action has gotten so dumb that it feels like a skit.  And it's just too earnest.  It doesn't feel like they're in on the joke about how dumb it is anymore.

This movie definitely has a meta feel to it in regard to the elephant in the room.  You can feel Paul Walker's real-life death all over it.  The movie was rearranged, most obviously at the ending, as a farewell to Paul the actor, rather than Brian, the character.  The ending is like those reels that they play for the In Memorium at the Oscars.  The final shot of the gang crying while watching him play with his kid on the beach, while he obscures his face a lot was definitely not what was best for the narrative, but maybe it's what the fans needed.  Not really being a part of that at the time, it's maybe not fair to judge it in hindsight, but it doesn't serve the story very well.

I will give credit for the tools that they used to replace Walker.  It's convincing, and other than a few parts (and only because I was looking for it), I couldn't see the seams.

It's a point now, with Furious 7, that this shit is off the rails.  It's definitely not a racing movie -- hasn't been since 4.  But it's not even a traditional action movie anymore.  It's like this crazy offshoot where it feels like a superhero film.  The single villain can take down a literal army of people.  The heroes can face death and walk away.  Deus Ex Machina is the solution to every problem.

The first 3 films create a trilogy of racing movies.
4-7 are a different franchise.  7 may be the worst of these.

It's just too much.

[Brian Fein]

couple things:

1) the end scene is not REALLY part of the movie.  It was added later as a tribute to Paul Walker.  don't think of it as storyline canon, its not.  It was a specific scene created to help write "Brian" out of the story, and pay tribute to the guy that started the franchise.

2) The African guy, and the Arab prince and his faceless guards, are just props in this movie.  They're installed for synthetic conflict and nothing more.  They add nothing to the story and you'll never see them again.

3) The movie is intended to be over the top unrealistic stunts.  That's exactly what it is.  Butthole-puckering stunt festivals.  I feel like we talked about suspension of disbelief when you started this whole thing...  Now you see why.

4) The scene of Dom driving off the cliff - really dumb, but to lend a tiny bit of credibility, he had a roll cage in the car and it was fully armored.  This time its not just about being fast.

5) I agree that the triangular conflict gets confusing, when there's multiple angles of dispute, between Shaw, Nobody, and the crew...  It gets to be a lot to track, but it makes the plot progress in a plausible manner.

I like Furious 7.  I liked Fate of the Furious better.  It has a different feel to it, but I suspect you will not like it.  I feel like you object to the film's run time more than anything, and so maybe you subconsciously judge a movie before you even watch it just based on how long you have to devote to it...?

[Dave Gray]

I feel like you object to the film's run time more than anything, and so maybe you subconsciously judge a movie before you even watch it just based on how long you have to devote to it...?

It's runtime vs content.

This movie doesn't have the content to support 2 hrs 20 mins.  The plot is a dumb mess, so why is there so much of it?


As for the ending, I think that the beginning of the movie was also changed to start writing Brian out.  I think they re-tooled a lot of it to make his own personal struggle about being a Dad vs. a hero and choosing to be a Dad.

[Brian Fein]

As for the ending, I think that the beginning of the movie was also changed to start writing Brian out.  I think they re-tooled a lot of it to make his own personal struggle about being a Dad vs. a hero and choosing to be a Dad.

Right, there's a scene in the beginning where Mia and Brian are talking privately and she tells him: "go do this and then that's it, we're out" and he agrees.  Kind of sets the scene for his removal very early on.  But, i also feel like they've said that before.  Most specifically in the early part of 6 when they were talking about going after Letty and they said "we both said we were gonna leave this life behind..."  So really who knows what's real...  In fact there's a point in Fate where they talk about Brian, and they shoot him down like "we agreed we wouldn't bring him into this..."  Some kind of ridiculous 'he's not really dead but this is why he's not here' kind of line...

[Dave Gray]

I don't know what was added after the fact, but I do know for sure that scenes in the front half of the movie were done using CG.  The heaviest uses of it were at the end, but they did some early stuff, too.

The movie makes you think that killing off Brian is a real possibility.  They focus on him maybe dying a lot with Mia at the start -- something these movies never did before.  So, I'm assuming that plotline was added to give you a little relief when he doesn't die, but gets to go live with his wife and kids.  The addition of a 2nd kid -- was that also added later?

[Brian Fein]

The addition of a 2nd kid -- was that also added later?

I don't know, but it did seem like an unnecessary afterthought.