“Furious 7” surpassed the $800 million mark globally and broke records since its release earlier this month. The film’s success may be attributed to the highly anticipated emotional farewell to the franchise’s lost team member, Paul Walker, who died in November 2013.
The Fast and Furious franchise has been evolving over more than 10 years, moving from strictly car-culture films to international heist movies.
The film picks up with the gang living their separate lives after the last heist in “Fast and Furious 6” (2013). Suddenly they are being targeted by a man named Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who is out to avenge his brother, the antagonist from “Fast and Furious 6.” Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is offered a deal to help him catch Shaw if he and his team pull just “one more heist.”
The film’s run time is 140 minutes, but it feels much longer than that. New characters and plot lines seemed to just keep popping up, and for some reason, Deckard Shaw just wouldn’t die.
Neither car crash nor motorcycle rolling down a cliff could keep him from his revenge plans. He even gets ambushed by a crew of special government operatives, but he still manages to escape.
While “Furious 7” looks little to nothing like “The Fast and the Furious” (2001), it is still home to cheesy one-liners. When Jason Statham’s character meets Vin Diesel he actually says a line to the effect of, “We come from different worlds, you and I.”
The plot is very convoluted, with clips from the other films trying to catch up viewers who may not have seen them in a while, if at all. Trying to make sense of what’s going on in “Furious 7” is difficult without any background from the last 10-plus years.
Noticeably absent is Paul Walker’s character, Brian O’Conner. While he does still appear in the film, his role is significantly smaller. This is because Walker had only shot half of the film before his death in 2013. Before resuming filming, the writer Chris Morgan and first-time Fast and Furious director James Wan made large revisions to the script. Walker’s remaining scenes were finished with his brothers Caleb and Cody as doubles and the rest was CGI.
The most CGI viewers will notice is the final scene where Walker pulls up beside Diesel and they drive off in separate directions.
Whether audiences have been following the series or were just interested to see this box-office hit, the emotional farewell to Walker has been sending them out in tears to the tune of Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again.” Movie-goers may appreciate the film more once they have seen the other six, since “Furious 7” serves as the conclusion to the franchise as we have known it.
