There’s a lot of words that can describe the little movie franchise that could.  Fast. Furious.  Fast and Furious.  2 Fast 2 Furious.  Fast 5. Furious 7. The list of ways to describe it are endless.  Somehow I missed this one in the theaters, but I saw it on Blu-Ray this weekend. Let me put into a few words how I would describe Furious 7. The year’s best film. Academy Award winning Film. Yep, I just said that out loud.  Don’t judge me.  Actually, go ahead and do so, because I know you are already.

I know there are a months worth of “films” left this year, and to you a Fast and Furious movie is a joke, but I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. I bet you don’t hear that very often.  So enjoy that feeling.  So here is my spoiler filled without any warnings review of Furious 7 whether you like it or not.

It  starts off with Jason Statham in a hospital spouting some Shakespearean logic about how no one messes with his brother and gets away with it (in Fast and Furious 6 they did mess with his brother).  Then we see a shot of him and the collateral damage he causes because someone messed with his brother. Thus we are supposed to know that he is not a guy that is to be messed with.

Then we see our friend The Rock who was in the previous F&F 6, working in his government office typing something, because that is something that a guy with that mass does when he’s not out pulverizing people.  When the Rock steps out for a short break of Muscle Milk and Steel girders , our new frenimy Jason Statham sits down at his computer and starts typing more stuff.  Bad mistake messing with The Rock’s computer.  And here is where Academy Award winning first starts to take form.  Both Statham and the Rock proceed to have a fight in which they are essentially equals.  So The Rock plays down his massiveness, while Statham plays well above his station.  But in the end, the Rock wins the acting battle by portraying a person that is able to somehow save a co-worker by hugging her and falling out of a 10 story building on top of a car AND only sustaining a broken arm and possibly a couple of cuts on his forehead (just for cool guy effect of course).

While in the hospital, we learn that the Rock has a feisty pre-teen daughter, which means I don’t know what the Rock is cooking, but it is probably Mac and Cheese.

That is just the beginning of the Academy Award winning film.  Paul Walker as you know died tragically in a car driving accident and never finished the filming for this one, yet somehow the special effects team made it seem as if he was there the whole time.

There were two strong themes in this movie, both of which are as subtle and intricate as Vin Diesel’s delivery of lines.  One was family.  As long as we stick together, we aren’t just a group of friends causing destruction to cars, landscapes, buildings, cities and people, we are family causing destruction to cars, landscapes, buildings, cities and people.   You and your 100’s of evil thugs may be smarter, more well armed and have better and faster vehicles and tons of money, but because you aren’t family like us, and you cannot beat us.

 

The second strong theme of the movie makes me want to go back 30 years and talk to our friend Marty McFly and tell him that he should not come back in October 2015, but April 2015 when Fast 7 came out in theaters.  If he saw Fast 7, he would have really believed that cars could fly.  In Furious 7, not once, not twice, but three times, our friend the most appropriately named Vin(as in VIN number on the dash) Diesel(the kind of fuel in a car) made cars fly.  First, he and his crew deliberately reversed their cars out of a plane(complete with its very own parachute) in order to save a high level hacker.  Second, he flew a super rare, outrageously expensive car stored in the top of a super expensive building in Abu Dabi,  to the building next door.  And if that weren’t enough, the brakes stuck, so he punched it to fly the car to yet a third building for good measure.  And if that weren’t enough they got the device in the car before allowing the million dollar car to plummet to the earth all on its own.  And here is again where their amazing acting took front stage.  Vin and Paul managed to do all this destruction without any sort of guilt upon their amazing acting faces.

This lead us to the climax in which the Furious 7 battled against their bitter rivals. Vin vs. Statham, Paul vs. the Ninja guy with tattoos that trapped him in a bus that fell off the cliff that Paul managed to jump off just as it was falling off the cliff guy, and the rest of the crew vs. helicopters, drones, and the dark organization that was trying to steal the God’s eye.  I know right? How intense is this? In the end, Vin managed to throw not only punches and wrenches, but a line right back in Statham’s face. And here is where I think Vin nails the Academy Award for Best Actor.  He delivers the line “You thought this was going to be a street fight? You’re damn right it is.” I dare you to find any actor in the world that could deliver that line like Vin did.  Sir Ian Mckellen? Phssssh. Tom Hanks? George Cloony? They would be laughing at that line, but when Vin says it, you totally believe it.  And when Statham is being swallowed up in the parking garage, and Vin says, “The thing about street fights … the street always wins,” you just can’t help but know that the street really is winning.

But the coup de gras is the ending.  We know Paul Walker can’t continue in the Fast franchise which we will all remember him for. The Fast crew give him a touching send off.  Just like in the beginning when Vin and him face off the first time in a race, they ride together, but at a fork in the road, we see Vin go one way and Paul go off in another direction.  And Voiceover Vin says at the end, “No matter where you are, whether you’re a quarter mile away, or half way around the world … you’ll always be with me. You’ll always be my brother. One last ride. It’s never goodbye.” 

Bitter tears shed and Academy Award winner for Best Picture.

ARRRGGGGHHHHH

Bitterly Fast Ben