Movies: "Furious 7" Primarily For Fans of the Series

It appears that the crew is taking one last ride in what appears to be the final installment of the “Fast & Furious” franchise with “Furious 7.”  

This time around Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew are being hunted down by the skilled British assassin Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who was the brother of Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), the antagonist in the previous film, to avenge his nearly dead brother.  Dominic goes to great lengths to protect his family (both literal and figurative) and does whatever it takes to stop Deckard. 

I’ll be perfectly honest with you readers: as of right now, this is the only “Fast & Furious” movie that I’ve seen.  For some reason this franchise has never really interested me, which is weird.  I’ve always been a fan of the ridiculous over-the-top action films, within reason of course, but with this franchise, I can’t put my finger on it. 

This film didn’t really help get me interested in checking out the previous movies.  For one thing, this movie was clearly made with previous fans in mind, probably just for them.  There are a ton of references and call-backs to previous installments that I had to look up to understand.  

That isn’t a bad thing.  I say that because one of my favorite franchises, “The Expendables,” has a whole ton of inside jokes.  

That’s a series that features such bits of dialogue as “Why don’t you give the job to my friend here.  He loves running around in the jungle.”  That line was delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s referencing Sylvester Stallone’s famous “Rambo” franchise.  Heck, they even throw in a Chuck Norris joke in the second movie, though those could get tiresome.  For example, in the third film they throw in a Wesley Snipes tax evasion joke. 

But anyway back to “Furious 7.”  I think the biggest problem I have with the franchise is that it seems to lose focus on what it wants to do plot wise.  We get a fairly good set up on the villain of the movie, but he disappears throughout a good chunk of the film.  

Instead the story focuses on a computer hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel) and her special computer chip that is apparently God.  It’s even called the God Chip.  Deckard pop-ups every now and then and disappears.  It’s pretty much just “Hi Deckard,” action scene occurs, “Bye Deckard!” 

One of the other things that was testing my patience was the character Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson).  I seriously couldn’t stand this guy, and I was baffled as to what he had to offer to the group.  Granted, I haven’t seen the other films, but I still don’t know why this guy is involved.  Every time this guy opened his mouth, I just shouted in my head, “Shut up!”

But with all of that being said, there were a few things that were rather good.  The best thing was the performance by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  I can’t help but love this guy.  He has the charisma and physical prowess to do these kinds of action films.  Also, the movie features Kurt Russell, and he, of course, is amazing.

The other really good thing about the film is its tribute to Paul Walker.  For those unaware, actor Paul Walker died in car crash during a break from filming the movie.  Many of his scenes were left unfinished.  So with Walker’s two lookalike brothers and stock audio of Paul, they managed to complete his scenes, and I couldn’t tell the difference. 

But for the final scene they’ve decided to have Vin Diesel give a very touching speech, in character, about how he and Walker will always be brothers.  It truly did show that Diesel and company really cared about their friend.