excellent review of FF7 (spoiler-free)
Fast and Furious 7, review: 'does justice to Paul Walker'
The seventh instalment of the Fast & Furious franchise is the strongest yet, says Robbie Collin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11489730/Fast-and-Furious-7-review-does-justice-to-Paul-Walker.html
(I post the article here but the link has a couple of photos as well. There is also a photo gallery from previous films here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11491857/The-Fast-and-the-Furious-in-pictures.html)
ETA: in case anyone is interested, this was followed up by another review, a heartfelt essay that, once again, describes the film as a fitting tribute to Paul: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11492475/fast-furious-7-paul-walker-tribute.html
By Robbie Collin
8:04AM GMT 24 Mar 2015
Dir: James Wan; Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chis ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Kurt Russell, Jordana Brewster, Dwayne Johnson. 12A cert, 137 mins.
Sometimes parting company with a friend is as simple as reaching a fork in the road. When Paul Walker, one of the rapidly growing roster of stars of the Fast & Furious franchise, died in a high-speed road accident just over a year ago, the widespread shock at the news of his death was followed by a realisation that the next film would somehow have to address it.
In the 14 years since the series’ modest beginnings, its joyriding heroes have been all but bulletproof. To date, two lead characters have "died" on screen only to reappear in later instalments. But Walker’s death changed that: it came loaded with an acknowledgement that these ferocious, fast-living young stars were mortal too.
Walker died part-way through the making of Fast & Furious 7; the film was completed with help from his two younger brothers, Caleb and Cody, and some subtle, unobtrusive computer graphics. Ghouls hoping to spot the joins will be disappointed. Only in a martial-arts brawl in a warehouse in the film’s final, Los Angeles-set act, are the use of a body double and tactical shadows conspicuous, and there are at least five more pressing reasons than those that the scene is hard to follow. But as a commemoration of his talent - the peculiar one, vital to Hollywood’s survival, of being able to shine like a brilliant-cut gemstone the moment you climb behind a steering wheel - the film does him justice.
In a gut-twisting mid-film car chase through the mountains of Azerbaijan, we see his character, the FBI agent Brian O’Conner, tightrope-walk across the roof of a bus as it teeters on a crumbling cliff-edge. The film cuts away to another scene of Vin Diesel and Jason Statham careering through a forest driving muscle cars like dodgems, but you wish the camera had stayed with Walker, and allowed him to complete the stunt without allowing us a pause for breath. Even low-born, trash cinema like this can cheat time and beat death. That’s the movies’ single greatest power - and why I found myself unexpectedly shedding a tear at the film’s perfectly judged, sunbathed, final fade to white.
But few people (Green Party members?) go to Fast & Furious films to cry. They go, as the title suggests, for loud cars and bad tempers, of which this seventh instalment delivers plenty - and perhaps a little too many. At two-and-a-quarter hours, Fast & Furious 7 is long and lumpy, and expectations that a new director - James Wan, recruited from the relatively cheap Saw and Insidious horror series - might bring a Roger Corman-like efficiency to the franchise go mostly unmet.
• Watch the trailer for Fast & Furious 7
What Wan does understand, though, is what made the earlier movies internationally successful, and how to replicate it. Just as the early James Bond films allowed cinemagoers passage to foreign countries in the 1960s and 1970s, so the Fast & Furious films do with foreign street cultures. (The first film was based around Walker’s character’s infiltration of an illegal Los Angeles drag-racing syndicate.) Where the fifth film had Brazil and the sixth London, the seventh decamps to Abu Dhabi, for the purpose of locating a computer chip, The God’s Eye, that Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and the gang are trying to locate, while occasionally swatting off Statham’s murderous villain.
Or at least, that’s what the script says. The real point of their visit, of course, is to ogle the country’s finely tuned, outrageously expensive supercars - and then drive them, very fastly and furiously, over dunes and out of windows. The film is a day-pass to a dream lifestyle, with all the gold furniture, white tuxedos and bronzed bottoms that entails. And unlike Bond, its characters, like the ex-con playboy Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and the ace mechanic Tej Parker (Chris ‘"Ludacris" Bridges), aren’t too cool to savour it.
This cast, or “family”, as the film never misses a chance to call them, has snowballed with every film. As the Fast & Furious series rolled round the world, it kept picking up actors and actresses in its path, giving it an organic multiracial appeal that studios probably spend tens of thousands trying to manufacture in other franchises.
New additions to the family include Kurt Russell as a grizzled governmental order-giver, the former Hollyoaks actress Nathalie Emmanuel as a gifted hacker, and the martial artists Ronda Rousey and Tony Jaa as star henchmen you hope might be turned in future episodes. They’re all welcome. In Fast & Furious films, they always are.
The series’ single most popular star - Dwayne Johnson, an American-Canadian former wrestler of mixed Black Nova Scotian and Samoan heritage - disappointingly sits most of this chapter out. But he makes the most of his limited screen time - and while he’s leading Statham’s (white) villain to his cell in chains, there’s a charge to Johnson’s line “If you want to escape, you bes’ start diggin’, boy” that tips the wink to the audience that the old racial hierarchies are being overturned.
I’ve always enjoyed the idea of the Fast & Furious films more than their execution, but this feels like the series’ strongest, even though some of its action sequences are so muddled they can barely walk straight. One set piece, a drone attack on Los Angeles, plays out almost in its entirety while Diesel and Statham’s characters stand on the roof of a car park and hit each other with massive spanners. After 15 minutes, surely even they’d give up and ponder the subtext.
But for each of those moments, there are two more that work. Walker’s bus-roof scramble, for instance; or the scene in which a £2.3 million cherry-red Lykan HyperSport jumps between the three Etihad Towers, and everything - vehicle, driver, window-shards, audience - remains silently suspended in mid-air for what feels like minutes. You couldn’t mistake this for polished blockbuster filmmaking: perhaps if you could, it wouldn’t be Fast & Furious. But it speaks straight to your adrenal glands, and for the most part, the conversation flows.
The seventh instalment of the Fast & Furious franchise is the strongest yet, says Robbie Collin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11489730/Fast-and-Furious-7-review-does-justice-to-Paul-Walker.html
(I post the article here but the link has a couple of photos as well. There is also a photo gallery from previous films here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11491857/The-Fast-and-the-Furious-in-pictures.html)
ETA: in case anyone is interested, this was followed up by another review, a heartfelt essay that, once again, describes the film as a fitting tribute to Paul: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11492475/fast-furious-7-paul-walker-tribute.html
By Robbie Collin
8:04AM GMT 24 Mar 2015
Dir: James Wan; Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chis ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Kurt Russell, Jordana Brewster, Dwayne Johnson. 12A cert, 137 mins.
Sometimes parting company with a friend is as simple as reaching a fork in the road. When Paul Walker, one of the rapidly growing roster of stars of the Fast & Furious franchise, died in a high-speed road accident just over a year ago, the widespread shock at the news of his death was followed by a realisation that the next film would somehow have to address it.
In the 14 years since the series’ modest beginnings, its joyriding heroes have been all but bulletproof. To date, two lead characters have "died" on screen only to reappear in later instalments. But Walker’s death changed that: it came loaded with an acknowledgement that these ferocious, fast-living young stars were mortal too.
Walker died part-way through the making of Fast & Furious 7; the film was completed with help from his two younger brothers, Caleb and Cody, and some subtle, unobtrusive computer graphics. Ghouls hoping to spot the joins will be disappointed. Only in a martial-arts brawl in a warehouse in the film’s final, Los Angeles-set act, are the use of a body double and tactical shadows conspicuous, and there are at least five more pressing reasons than those that the scene is hard to follow. But as a commemoration of his talent - the peculiar one, vital to Hollywood’s survival, of being able to shine like a brilliant-cut gemstone the moment you climb behind a steering wheel - the film does him justice.
In a gut-twisting mid-film car chase through the mountains of Azerbaijan, we see his character, the FBI agent Brian O’Conner, tightrope-walk across the roof of a bus as it teeters on a crumbling cliff-edge. The film cuts away to another scene of Vin Diesel and Jason Statham careering through a forest driving muscle cars like dodgems, but you wish the camera had stayed with Walker, and allowed him to complete the stunt without allowing us a pause for breath. Even low-born, trash cinema like this can cheat time and beat death. That’s the movies’ single greatest power - and why I found myself unexpectedly shedding a tear at the film’s perfectly judged, sunbathed, final fade to white.
But few people (Green Party members?) go to Fast & Furious films to cry. They go, as the title suggests, for loud cars and bad tempers, of which this seventh instalment delivers plenty - and perhaps a little too many. At two-and-a-quarter hours, Fast & Furious 7 is long and lumpy, and expectations that a new director - James Wan, recruited from the relatively cheap Saw and Insidious horror series - might bring a Roger Corman-like efficiency to the franchise go mostly unmet.
• Watch the trailer for Fast & Furious 7
What Wan does understand, though, is what made the earlier movies internationally successful, and how to replicate it. Just as the early James Bond films allowed cinemagoers passage to foreign countries in the 1960s and 1970s, so the Fast & Furious films do with foreign street cultures. (The first film was based around Walker’s character’s infiltration of an illegal Los Angeles drag-racing syndicate.) Where the fifth film had Brazil and the sixth London, the seventh decamps to Abu Dhabi, for the purpose of locating a computer chip, The God’s Eye, that Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and the gang are trying to locate, while occasionally swatting off Statham’s murderous villain.
Or at least, that’s what the script says. The real point of their visit, of course, is to ogle the country’s finely tuned, outrageously expensive supercars - and then drive them, very fastly and furiously, over dunes and out of windows. The film is a day-pass to a dream lifestyle, with all the gold furniture, white tuxedos and bronzed bottoms that entails. And unlike Bond, its characters, like the ex-con playboy Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and the ace mechanic Tej Parker (Chris ‘"Ludacris" Bridges), aren’t too cool to savour it.
This cast, or “family”, as the film never misses a chance to call them, has snowballed with every film. As the Fast & Furious series rolled round the world, it kept picking up actors and actresses in its path, giving it an organic multiracial appeal that studios probably spend tens of thousands trying to manufacture in other franchises.
New additions to the family include Kurt Russell as a grizzled governmental order-giver, the former Hollyoaks actress Nathalie Emmanuel as a gifted hacker, and the martial artists Ronda Rousey and Tony Jaa as star henchmen you hope might be turned in future episodes. They’re all welcome. In Fast & Furious films, they always are.
The series’ single most popular star - Dwayne Johnson, an American-Canadian former wrestler of mixed Black Nova Scotian and Samoan heritage - disappointingly sits most of this chapter out. But he makes the most of his limited screen time - and while he’s leading Statham’s (white) villain to his cell in chains, there’s a charge to Johnson’s line “If you want to escape, you bes’ start diggin’, boy” that tips the wink to the audience that the old racial hierarchies are being overturned.
I’ve always enjoyed the idea of the Fast & Furious films more than their execution, but this feels like the series’ strongest, even though some of its action sequences are so muddled they can barely walk straight. One set piece, a drone attack on Los Angeles, plays out almost in its entirety while Diesel and Statham’s characters stand on the roof of a car park and hit each other with massive spanners. After 15 minutes, surely even they’d give up and ponder the subtext.
But for each of those moments, there are two more that work. Walker’s bus-roof scramble, for instance; or the scene in which a £2.3 million cherry-red Lykan HyperSport jumps between the three Etihad Towers, and everything - vehicle, driver, window-shards, audience - remains silently suspended in mid-air for what feels like minutes. You couldn’t mistake this for polished blockbuster filmmaking: perhaps if you could, it wouldn’t be Fast & Furious. But it speaks straight to your adrenal glands, and for the most part, the conversation flows.