I was unexpectedly called in to work this morning, and had to rush across town for the 10:45 am showing of Furious 7. I popped my Volskswagen Fox through the gears and raced along the motorway, overtaking a bus and swerving into the car park. Screech! I made it just in time, thanks to the 29 minutes of adverts at Cineworld Glasgow.
Being the seventh in the series (including the non-canon ones) there's a whole lotta history, and this is acknowledged. There's especial poignancy as Paul Walker is dead (more of this later). In the very first line villainous Jason Statham claims that "They say if you want to glimpse the future, just look behind you" although I've never heard anyone say that. Then it pans out to reveal he's killed all the special forces people protecting his kid-brother, who presumably was the conquered villain in a previous film (I've not seen them all - who has?). Statham is now out for revenge, and that's his character sorted.
Cut to Vin Diesel driving along. "They say the open road helps you think" he muses and so it goes on. They race through a few locations, and in every one there are rows of shiny cars, young people cheering and women in bikinis jumping up and down. What was I doing here?
For their part the team are out to get Statham, but get heavily sidetracked by the surprising appearance of Kurt Russell. He tells them about a hacker, who is identified merely by 'Ramsey' and a blank photo (so it's clearly a woman). She's invented the God's Eye that can hack into all cameras and find anyone. Kurt Russell says that if they find it he'll let them use it to find Statham. While they are looking for the God's Eye they come across Statham several times, but seem to forget that finding him is their ultimate objective. Then in an extremely fanciful setup the device is inexplicably hidden inside, you guessed it, another sports car, which they obviously end up stealing and driving.
There are a few good moments. Early on Paul Walker revs up a car, only for it to be revealed that it's a mini-van, and he's now a family man. In the very same scene there's a second visual gag where a car speeds round but it's a toy car and the kid then throws it on the ground. "Cars don't fly" says Walker, prophetically, as later in the movie cars do fly. He gives a a strangely muted performance. He seems genuinely morose to be shackled by his family, but then when his loving wife absolutely insists that he abandon their family and go on another reckless (and pointless) mission he still seems rather morose. The only time he perks up is when delivering a touche comeback to his kung-fu nemesis he's just sent hurtling down a big hole. "Too slow!" he says with childish glee, though that sort of bad-ass line would be much better deadpan. During filming Walker was a passenger in a car that hit a lamppost, killing him. The film was finished with the help of his similar looking brothers.
He does get the best moment in the film, which you may have already seen in the trailer. It's when he's running up a bus which is falling off a cliff. He also gets a rather odd tribute at the end of the film, when Vin Diesel goes on and on about what a brother he's been and there's flashbacks to a young curly-haired Paul Walker grinning in front of some more sports cars. The spiritualism runs deep in Fast and Furious 7. When The Rock decides the hospital can't hold him any more he doesn't cut himself out of the plaster cast, he simply grimaces and his arm bursts out. When Vin Diesel's heart stops, following his final stunt attacking a helicopter with his car, the CPR has no effect, but an emotional appeal from his amnesiac girlfriend brings him back with a gruff one-liner.
I think the appeal of the film is the sense of camaraderie between Vin's team, and they act as a high functioning gang of delinquents. That's probably the appeal of the whole series. I'm partly tempted to go back and watch all the rest now.
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