Furious 7

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Christopher "Ludacris" Bridges, Dwayne Johnson, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Kurt Russell
Directed by: James Wan
Screenplay by: Chris Morgan

    Most of the gang is back for the seventh installment of the Fast and the Furious movies.  Sadly, Paul Walker, one of the main characters, wasn't there to finish the movie once it had been started.
    In the last installment, we met the villain, Owen Shaw.  Now that the team has taken him down, his "big bad brother" Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) is out to take revenge on Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), and the rest of the crew along with everyone they care about.  Shaw is basically a ghost with special ops as a background, making him extremely difficult to find.  That's where Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) comes in.  As an agent for the U.S government, he's after Shaw as well, but needs the help of Toretto and his team.  He informs them that they have a way to find Shaw, but it's not going to be easy.  First, they have to find an operative named Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), who is the designer of a program called "God's Eye"; a program used to locate anybody, anywhere.  Once they have the "God's Eye", they can locate Shaw; assuming he hasn't found them yet.  This story takes us on a wild ride all around the world; from jumping cars out of an airplane (yes you read that correctly) in the Caucasus mountains of Asia, to jumping cars through penthouse apartments in Abu Dhabi, and finally high speed pursuits in the place where the whole series began; Los Angeles.
    There is not a whole lot of plot in this film, mainly details of the plot, including lots of fast paced action sequences, like one would expect from films of this franchise.  There are some inconsistencies with this film, such as how in the storyline of the whole series, it takes place right after Tokyo Drift, the third installment in the franchise, yet it takes place in 2015 (Tokyo Drift takes place in 2006, the year it was made).  The film also focuses too much on finding Ramsey and not enough on trying to take out Shaw.  There is also an associate villain named Jakande (Djimon Hounsou) who could really have been left out of the movie.
    The stunts in this film out-perform stunts seen in the previous films.  Not to sound cliche, but they just get better and better with each movie produced.  Previous films have had characters breaking into a police station and carrying out a massive vault filled with millions of dollars (Fast Five), and taking down an airplane while it's trying to take off from a runway that has to be a million miles long (Fast & Furious 6).  All of that seems to have led up to the major stunt in this film of cars jumping out of an airplane onto a two lane road in the mountains.  This is perhaps the craziest scene in the entire movie.  Also, this movie involves some of the most serious crashes in the franchise, yet there is minimal injury to those involved; another inconsistency.
    The best part of this film is the character interaction.  It's really amazing to see how characters' interactions have changed since the early films.  After 14 years and seven movies, you can tell that the actors have developed a great deal of chemistry among each other and it really plays out well in Furious 7.  It's also really amazing to see how they made this movie without Paul Walker, who was killed in a terrible car crash in California part way through the making of this film.  Dom Toretto talks many times throughout the film about not having friends, but family instead.  You can really see that among these characters throughout the series, but especially in this film.
     Overall, this film would have been much different had Paul Walker not been killed in that crash and it had been made the way it originally would have, but what we have instead is a film that is probably better.  Furious 7's main focus seems to be on the chemistry between the characters, and less on the action.  It takes a while to get into the action packed sequences, which I find to be a plus.  With the earlier films, I found there to be too much emphasis on the action and not enough on the development of characters.  Furious 7 does it differently.  There is a really nice tribute to Paul Walker at the end of the film that has clips from throughout the series of him.  His crash serves as a reminder to all of us that we don't live in the movies.
     I give Furious 7 a B+.