Review: Fast and Furious 7 (2015)

I am feeling quite smug today, I have managed to watch not one but BOTH of the movies that me and Allie said we were looking forward to this month, if you didn't catch it, here it is.  Anyway, after begging numerous people to come with me to see Fast and Furious 7, I ended up going on a Monday lunchtime on my own.  Aside from a few childish (and somewhat mean) comments from fellow cinema goers regarding visiting the cinema alone, it was awesome.

So, Fast and Furious picks up when 6 left off, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) is still in a coma and his bigger, badder and angrier brother (Jason Statham) is still out for revenge.  After (somehow) putting the brick wall of Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in hospital, it's down to Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his 'family' Brian (Paul Walker), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) to take him down.  Partnering up with shady Government official 'Mr Nobody' (Kurt Russell) to stop a new piece if software 'Gods Eye' getting into the wrong hands in exchange for help finding Shaw.

I was really looking forward to this, partly because I wanted to see how they had worked with finishing the movie after the passing of Paul Walker and because I knew there would be some sort of tribute to him at the end.  As you all well know by now I love a good weepie, although its a bit harder to shake off when you know the person has gone in real life.  It's fair to say that I only noticed one part of the movie that was quite clearly not Walker but one of his brothers.  I watched a documentary afterwards which showed some of the scenes where his brother and CGI technology were used and I had NO idea.  Kudos to the tech team for pulling that whole thing off because it is really well done.

Ok sorry back to the actual movie. As always, it is filled with cheesy one-liners and physics defying action sequences and I loved every minute.  I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing, I laughed, I cried (a lot).  The way it was shot kept the pace of the film up throughout, the speed zoom into certain rooms or items was really clever.  There were some truly ridiculous sequences where you knew there was absolutely no chance it could happen in real life (flex your muscles to break a cast, skydiving cars, car jumping through, not one, not two but THREE skyscrapers!) but that's almost all part of the fun now.  If you got to see these films, you know that is what it's going to be like.  If you're going to in there to rip it apart and analyse every last scene, don't bother seeing it, you wont enjoy it. You have to love it for what it is.

I was thrilled to hear that Fast and Furious 8 has been given the green light, however I'm not at all surprised.  Mr Nobody barely had a look in as a character in this movie (I think it was supposed to be a more prominent thread but had to be cut back in light of script changes after Walkers death) but I am lead to believe he will have a much bigger part and impact in the 8th instalment coming next year.  I had a few niggles with the story, it all seemed a bit jumbled and confusing but I think that may be due to the late stage script changes.  I'm hoping for a more solid storyline in the next one.

The ending was not at all what I expected, I think it was better than what I expected but I have to say it was extremely emotional.  I was holding back tears in the cinema, I dread to think what I will be like if I ever watch this at home.  The voiceover from Dom (Vin Diesel) is so moving and heart-breaking, more than likely because he was speaking from a real place.  I also noticed the words in the song played were really relevant, I googled it afterwards and 'See you again' was written as a tribute to Paul Walker.

If you like these films for what they are you'll love it, it's as simple as that.