Review: Furious 7 (2015)

After defeating international terrorist Owen Shaw, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and the rest of the crew have separated to return to more normal lives. However, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), Owen’s older brother, is thirsty for revenge. A slick government agent offers to help Dom and company take care of Shaw in exchange for their help in rescuing a kidnapped computer hacker who has developed a powerful surveillance program.

I’m not gonna lie to you, I don’t like The Fast & the Furious movies, Fast 5 is the exception, but apart from that I pretty much hate each and every one. I know you’re supposed to leave your brain at the door before watching these movies but for me it’s impossible and I find the over-the-top action idiotic to say the least. Furious 7 is loaded with over-the-top action sequences which involve jumping from one building to another in what is seemingly a car with invisible wings, not to mention a poorly contrived plot about some hacking mumbo-jumbo that I couldn’t care less about.

The acting is what it is. Vin Diesel is playing Dominic Toretto the way he plays him in every Fast and Furious movie, Paul Walker is good in his final on-screen performance, The Rock is pretty okay in his brief 15 minutes of screen-time. Jason Statham and Djimoun Honsou are the two villains in this latest installment and they’re both a bit of a hit and miss really. Honsou is the stereotypical African warlord who just can’t seem to get his hands to the hacking software known as ‘God’s Eye’ which as you would believe makes you see everyone and everything on the comfort of your laptop. Statham plays the brother of Luke Evans’s character from the last movie, Deckard Shaw. Statham is a good villain but loses his significance as one, mainly because he’s showing up literally every five minutes. It doesn’t even matter if the gang is in Abu Dhabi or L.A, Shaw’s there in a moments notice.

Furious 7 is probably just a minor step up from Furious 6, the story is a tad better balanced which makes it superior to the previous one, but inferior to Fast 5. The film had a tough job of filming many scenes without Paul Walker and much of those scenes feel disjointed. I will say that the tribute to Paul Walker is very well done, it’s both touching and emotional and that alone elevates the film to a certain extent. All together it’s nothing more than dumb popcorn entertainment and as a film, fairly mediocre, but mediocre fun.

5.8/10

-Khalid