Fast and Furious 7 Review

Go back 15 years and watch the first of the Fast and Furious films and what we have here is about a billion light years away from where it started. This film is unbelievably STOOPID, it is utterly ridiculous, but there is a certain level of fun that can be had if stupid is done properly, this is almost that. The plot sounds simple enough, Jason Statham is the brother of bad guy Luke Evans, and he’s out for revenge against Dom and the gang for what they did to his little brother. Sounds simple enough and the excitement of seeing Statham vs the gang sounds titillating, the film however has the stupidest mcguffin in the history of cinema. The gang are recruited by shady CIA man Kurt Russell, who could actually just play himself and it wouldn’t make any less sense, he wants the gang to find a computer hacker who will lead them to a piece of software she developed which can hack everything simultaneously to find anyone (liberally ripped off the dark knight), the gang will do this for Kurt because they you can use it to find Statham. That set up makes zero amount of sense however because Statham turns up to kill them in every fucking scene, so there’s endless scenes of them discussing “once we find this software we can find Deckard Shaw and take the fight to him”, JUST TURN AROUND FOR FUCKS SAKE, HES RIGHT BEHIND YOU! However stupid this is though, these films have never been much about story, they’ve been about set pieces and fun, and this is really good fun, the cars are faster and the action furiouser, it also shows a certain amount of subtlety in its sparing use of Dwayne “the rock” Johnson. The films greatest strength is its handling of the sad death of Paul Walker, the ending is so beautifully handled that for the first time this film seems to get you to believe in the notion of family that it’s been talking about for the last 15 years, God bless you Mr Walker wherever you are. (High 3 Stars)