'Furious 7' Is Exhilarating and Emotional — Now It's Time to Let the Franchise End
Don’t make Fast & Furious 8.
That’s my recommendation, for what it’s worth. Which — don’t worry — isn’t worth anything. The way F&F star Vin Diesel is talking it up in interviews, he intends to stay furious enough to make an eighth and even ninth or tenth iteration of Universal’s most lucrative franchise of all time. Studio visionaries are probably sketching out every possible action configuration of F&F mutations right this minute, including the outlines for a bantering buddy picture starring Tyrese Gibson and Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges; a lady-racers caper for Michelle Rodriguez; and a round-the-world tour, with cold Coronas at every pit stop for Diesel’s bullet-headed Dominic Toretto. And for Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw — the baddie in Furious 7 — something stubbly and British!
Still, I say, don’t make Fast & Furious 8. And I say this out of love. Furious 7 (which opens Friday) is a great big, ballsy, exhilarating, ludicrous/Ludacris steroid-zapped dose of F&F entertainment. The stunts are huge, the banter is bright, the team is tight. And the multi-ethnic cuties who are extras still dress entirely in bikini bottoms, incapable of standing anywhere near a shiny vehicle without wiggling their bikini’d bottoms. I enjoy every screech of the wheels, every side-mirror glance, every explosion. I love the beautiful white dental work of the entire cast!
In the midst of this yeee-hah, too, under the deft direction of James Wan, Furious 7 exhibits real classiness, expressing sincere emotion in handling the emergency challenge of absorbing the accidental death of central star Paul Walker, who was killed — as a passenger in a single-vehicle car crash — on a break from filming in 2013. In a beautifully integrated coda, the movie honors Walker’s work, mourns his loss, and looks into the distance —a much longer view than the next quarter mile-at-a-time of road. Diesel has said in interviews that we would get teary. I got teary.
Now, I say, do the even classier thing of closing down F&F as we know it. Love ya, Dom. See ya, Lettie. Cop-not-a-cop Brian O’Conner, you can rest now. Great work, gang. Thanks, and Godspeed.
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Or maybe that’s just my obsession speaking. Because for the past two weeks, I have been more involved with Fast & Furious movies than most any over-fifty white woman who isn’t Helen Mirren. (Ms. Mirren has said she wants in on F&F 8.) In anticipation of F&F 7, I rewatched the previous six films — willingly, happily, a big fan who has bought every evolution and tweak of the zoom-zoom franchise, no complaints, making me a satisfied customer for 14 years. During my many years as a movie critic at Entertainment Weekly, the anticipated release of a new installment was cause for uncomplicated pleasure: These were my guys.
I started all over again with the 2001 original, The Fast and the Furious — so road-rough, so excellently unpolished, the characters of Dominic Toretto (Diesel), his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), his girlfriend Letty Ortiz (Rodriguez), and his soul brother, cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) so sketchy and larval. The dialogue swaggered; individual lines were grimy. Walking into a roomful of ladies with wiggly bottoms, Letty had me with “I smell skanks.” Directed by Rob Cohen with a tire wrench in one hand and a can of WD-40 in the other, the thing kicked up a storm of gravel and exhaust fumes and it ran like hell.
I steered through the snappy bling-bling of 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), directed by John Singleton, the reward for which was the genius addition of Tyrese and Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges to the permanent crew. I went with the curves of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), where important work was being done even while all the original players were away, as new director Justin Lin began to make the F&F shape his own; he went on to be pit boss of F&F 4-6, strengthening and solidifying the series’ signature look and feel. (Another perk of all of that drifting: Sung Kang got the lay of the F&F landscape, joining the Family Furious as cool-headed, handsome Han, a former gang member.)
I rounded the curve with Fast and Furious (2009) — Letty is dead? And I swooshed through the victory laps of Fast Five (2011) — Letty is still dead? And Fast & Furious 6 (2013) — Letty is not dead! Time spent on Dom’s sincere grief and the rest of the gang’s empathy, coupled with the introduction of Dwayne Johnson — the Rock, unchained! — for comic hard-assery boosted the franchise to a whole new level of tonal complexity. As a result, the films were rewarded with a whole new level of popularity.
And then I was ready for Furious 7. Ready, at least, aside from the awful knowledge that every time I would see Paul Walker’s pretty face on screen, his pool-blue eyes shining with simple, star-quality … simpleness, his face glowing with all the golden light that Hollywood tech crews can enhance, I would remember that the man himself is dead. Killed, indeed, in a manner that can’t help but put the entire premise of the whole insanely irresponsible, don’t-try-this-at-home fantasy road saga in the worst possible light. And that — more awful still — some of what I would be seeing of Walker was not Walker himself, but a spooky 21st century amalgam of CGI sophistication and body doubling. Body doubling, no less, by Walker’s own brothers, Caleb and Cody. I clutch my heart.
The constant present awareness of Walker’s real present absence never leaves while watching Furious 7. But what makes the movie worth its jersey number is the go-for-broke energy with which everyone does his and her work. And I mean everyone — the cast, the production team, the dementedly brave stunt team, the screenwriters, director, and producers. The fifth and sixth installments had reached a kind of sweet spot of fastness and fury, with all systems integrated: Cars did things cars couldn’t possibly do, of course, in classically tense action sequences. But the F&F organism also left room for jaunty humor (count on Roman and Tej, don’t rule out Han, and bet on Hobbs), cultural awareness (hopping the globe, each travelogue pointing up the chasm between rich and poor), and un-cartoony appreciation for the importance of human connection. Dom loves Letty, yes, and Mia loves Brian.
But the smaller links are equally important, perhaps most notably the grace with which Dom, Letty, and Hobbs’s fellow agent, Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky), handle Elena’s brief romance with Dom during Letty’s brief … death. Even quieter, the chemistry between Han and Gisele (Gal Gadot) nevertheless packed a punch.
And the latest installment fulfills its mission: Fast Five = big. Furious 6 = bigger. Furious 7 = biggest. Biggest and one of the pillars of the production is gone. Where is left to go? Do the Furiosos really want to age into a jokey commentary on their own aging? Aren’t cars now driving themselves? Aren’t drones now doing the heavy lifting?
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At its piston-pumping heart, the Fast and Furious franchise is an old-fashioned jalopy. Evil is punished. Family is celebrated — maybe even fetishized, but here is not the place for me to get cynical. (Although let me just say, this clan messes with the adage that “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.” This family is self-selecting: Do none of these people have troublesome mothers? Disapproving fathers? Siblings who are pains in the butt?)
In these films, honorable loyalty is rewarded. Good driving is respected as a function of good character. Parenthood is saluted as a higher calling than saving the world from nefarious villains armed with dastardly intel encrypted on easy-to-lose thumb drives. Spiritual awareness of a respectfully unpushy, vaguely Catholic sort is always present — the grace before meals, the churches, the genuflecting, the silver cross jewelry reverently passed from hand to hand, the chalices of Corona.
It’s all so good, this fastness and fury. Now step out of the race, say a prayer, and let it go.
For more on ‘Furious 7′ — including a production timeline and interviews with the cast — check out our complete coverage here. To find out where ‘Furious 7′ is playing near you, visit our Showtimes page.
