Movie Review: Fast and Furious 7

The most gleefully meat-headed franchise going has intersected with real-life tragedy and handled it with surprising grace. Meat-headed grace, sure, but grace nonetheless.

The Fast and Furious series has evolved over its fourteen years from brawny also-ran (the first instalment made an impressive though not supersized $200 million back in 2001) to the biggest game in town (part six, when surely lag is supposed to set in, still grossed $788 million worldwide).

But what happens when the cinematic equivalent of a goofy theme park attraction is interrupted by grim reality, as occurred midway through the production of Fast & Furious 7, when star Paul Walker met an untimely end in his Porsche Carrera? (The high-speed collision did not occur while shooting.)

Well, you get the most stirring instalment of a series that previously knew not what to do with its pent-up emotions. Vin Diesel’s declarations that nothing meant more than family used to feel like an easy catchphrase. Suddenly, it’s a eulogy, and an effective one at that.

Diesel again plays Dom Toretto, the notorious street racer who found a look in 2001 – black muscleshirt, knowing smirk – and stuck with it. His is not the only familiar face. Michelle Rodriguez, the most inconsistent presence in the saga, returns as Dom’s amnesiac girlfriend Letty. Dwayne Johnson, the new kid in town (at least since Fast Five), has deigned to briefly provide memorable moments at the book-ends of the flick.

Even screenwriter Chris Morgan is back to barely script his fifth subsequent Furious film.

The story, as much as it can be called that, involves a plot by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) to avenge his criminal brother, who Dom and co. took down in Furious Six. No longer safe to enjoy domestic bliss, in the case of Brian (Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster), or whatever it is that Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) get up to between pictures, the lot of them must come together for one final fight. Yes, another final fight.

Where Kurt Russell’s secret service spook and Nathalie Emmanuel’s spunky hacker come into it is of little consequence, except that they give our heroes a reason to travel across the globe, embarking on outrageous reconnaissance missions supposedly leading them to Deckard. The first involves manned-cars being dropped out of a plane onto the mountainous roadways of Azerbaijan. The second requires some skillful driving out of Dubai’s towering Burj Khalifa and into an adjacent building. The third… well, it doesn’t really matter what the third is, if you’ve bought the previous two.

This time, it's Australia’s James Wan (Saw) in the driver’s seat, replacing outgoing director Justin Lin. He's missed. Wan doesn’t quite have the balletic action chops of Lin, who made paintball so profound in Community and who incited applause at my sessions of Fast Five and Furious Six with his inspired climactic set pieces. Wan leans harder on stunts that have quite clearly been faked through CGI, as in the Burj Khalifa jump. Now, surely no one believed the previous movies were cinéma vérité documentaries, but here, the jaw-dropping vehicular carnage just looks more expensive as opposed to more perilous.

That said, the special effects do impress in the way Paul Walker has been reconstructed for scenes he was not present to film. Through the use of body doubles – including two of his brothers – and face-mapping by Peter Jackson’s effects house Weta, Walker has been seamlessly integrated into proceedings. Savvier viewers can probably pick the moments in which it’s not truly him. However, to the production’s credit, they’re never glib in executing their morbid task, and the very earnest ending is a more than fitting send-off for the actor. Tears were accumulating in my screening; a first for this franchise, surely.

Before that finale, Furious Seven is a lot of fun, and it does what it says on the can: it makes cars go fast. The best sequence might actually be when Dom, who has often used his vehicles for reasons other than advertised, literally tears off driving instruments for a muscle-car sword-fight with Deckard. The operatic realness of the Furious features cannot be denied.

3.5/5

In cinemas April 2. Rated M for action violence.