Saturday, April 11, 2015

Movie: Fast & Furious 7(2015) – My opinion

!!!Spoiler Warning!!!


We have now come to the seventh installment in the Fast & Furious franchise. There are two thing we are wondering going into this. Is the franchise still good and what will they do with Paul Walkers character? Let's find out.

The brother of Owen Shaw from Fast & Furious 6 is coming for revenge against the crew that left his brother in a coma.

The first thing i learned about this movie when the news started coming out was who they had hired to direct when Justin Lin said he would not direct the 7th installment. They hired James Wan who is mostly known for his work in the horror-genre. He made the first Saw movie(that is still the best one), Insidious and The Conjuring. These are good movies so was excited to see what he would do in another genre, and he did great. We are still moving away from the street racing setting, as the first movie was set in, and it's more hunting criminals and some people don't like this. I mean it was a smart move to change what the movies was, or else they wouldn't get as far as seven movies. To keep the franchise going the movie needs to change with the times and the fact that this is number seven in the franchise means that they succeeded at that. You still get all the sweet cars and action, just less of the organized street racing(as in the last couple of movies).

The cast in this one is huge, you got Vin Diesel(known for his work on Pitch Black, xXx, Guardians of the Galaxy) returning for his role as Dominic Toretto. He's still big, he's still hard-hitting and he's still means that family is everything. Dwayne Johnson(known for his work on Faster, Doom, Be Cool and his work as a wrestler for the WWE) is playing Luke Hobbs. He's still bigger and he's a total bad-ass, but we see a little too little of him in the movie in my opinion, but that might be because i love watching him do his thing. Michelle Rodriguez(known for his work on Girlfight, S.W.A.T, Avatar) is back as Letty Ortiz. Her character is a little interesting because of her amnesia that we got to know about in the last movie. I'm on the fence if i think this is a good or bad thing. It gives Dominic Toretto something more to do then just drive around and hitting people but then again it's amnesia. One of the most overused things in movies ever. They could probably give her back her memory earlier or something. Having said that i must point out that Michelle Rodriguez still looks fantastic. Tyrese Gibson(known for his work on Four Brothers, Transformers) is playing Roman Pearce who as just become the comic relief of the movie. He wasn't that much of a character before and he is still not much of a character(not because of Tyrese playing him necessarily, but probably because of how his character is written). Ludacris(known for his work on Max Payne, Gamer) plays Tej Parker, who i just call the tech-guy(i think that is mentioned in the movie too). He is there to make fun of Roman and to do all the tech-stuff no one else can have as their skill. The bad-guy this time around is Deckard Shaw, the brother of the bad-guy from the last movie. Jason Statham(known for his work on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, The Transporter, Crank, The Expendables) plays a great bad-guy, my biggest problem is that the bad-guy is a trained super-soldier. He is a super-soldier-dude and is going up against a bunch of street-racers. How the hell can he lose?

You also got Jordana Brewster, Djimon Hounsou, Tony Jaa, Ronda Rousey and Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell is what i call an auto-win. I just think he is great to watch, and he has some of the best cult movies ever. Tony Jaa is always great to watch because of his insane martial arts moves. Ronda Rousey is there to fight Michelle Rodriguez in something that turned out to be a pretty good fight.

Lastly we got Paul Walker(known for his work on She's All That, The Skulls, Running Scared) playing Brian O'Connor. His character had to change because we learned that his girlfriend was pregnant in the last movie so now he is a dad. This makes him a little more relatable since many people have to change their lifestyle when they become a parent. Sadly we lost Paul Walker in a car accident in November in 2013. Paul Walker was done with about half of the movie. There was talks of scrapping the movie but they decided to finish the movie and give him a proper send-off. They used body doubles(among them were the brothers of Paul Walker), stunt doubles and CGI. The send-off is great. I think people thought of it as a good send-off. Some people even cry, that's how well done it is. Thank you Paul Walker for all you gave.

The movie as a whole is better then i expected. I felt like there wasn't much more they could do with this franchise. Too be fair there isn't much new here but it is very well done though. Very few boring parts. Even though it is 137 minutes long it doesn't feel like it's over 2 hours long which is a sign of good storytelling. A lot of great stunts, good fights and beautiful cars. Right now this is tied for the best in the franchise for me with the first one. The story is good enough to keep you interested and when everything goes down you are exited to see what the next crazy thing they will do is. The story gives no surprises but that is ok. They go to some really great locations and use theme for more then their looks and there is some great callbacks to earlier movies in the franchise, like the place where Brian O'Connor tests his car in the first movie and when we meet Hector from the first movie. Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson are great on the screen and Jason Statham plays a great bad-guy. I was very entertained and will say you should go watch this if you like macho action or amazing cars. Just don't expect something you have never seen before.

TL;DR

Good movie. One of the best in the franchise. Great action, great cars, good fights. Paul Walkers send-off is beautifully done. Not many surprises. Very entertaining.

My question for you:
What did you think of the Paul Walker send-off?
Do you want an Fast & Furious 8?


Please leave a comment(negative,positive, suggestions or/and answers).

Until next time, stay fresh.

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Twitter: @HarmlessKen

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