The ever-expanding repertoire of Dominic Toretto and his loyal crew now includes the ability to leap off the ground into airborne helicopters and to drop out of the sky while still in the driver’s seat.
The single most important contribution of the Fast and Furious franchise is to push the limits of what cars are capable of. Despite notching up seven editions, the real heroes of the never-ending saga – the stunt directors – keep coming up with new, jaw-dropping ways to prove that gravity is a conspiracy of science.
Even Jason Statham, who plays Dominic’s implacable adversary in Furious 7 and no stranger to the joys of vrooming vehicles and death-tempting behaviour, has to acknowledge that his Transporter series has nothing on this lot. His character suffers the worst kind of ignominy conceivable in this movie’s universe: he is pummelled to the ground and buried under rubble.
Never say die
Of course, Statham will probably survive and return in the eighth edition, which is scheduled for 2017. Luke Evans’s Owen Shaw appeared to have met his maker in Fast & Furious 6, but here he is on a hospital bed, waiting to be resuscitated and launched back into the saddle for more.
Statham’s Deckard, Owen’s vengeful brother, provides one of two plot points in the new movie, which has been directed by James Wan (The Conjuring). Even as Deckard prevents Dominic (Vin Diesel) from rekindling his relationship with the amnesiac Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Brian (Paul Walker) from settling into domesticity with Dominic’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), the crew is reassembled for the apocryphal “last job” involving the rescue of a bikini-clad hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel).
Urged on by Kurt Russell’s self-described government functionary Mr Nobody, Dominic and company get down the movie’s real business: delivering action sequences that are utterly preposterous and therefore entirely satisfying. Cars fly in the best-realised sequence in Azerbaijan, while Abu Dhabi’s glass-fronted architecture takes some welcome knocks in the portion of the movie that stars India’s very own Ali Fazal as an Arab.
The world is not enough
The franchise’s sensitivity to its international audiences (it is one of the few big-budget extravaganzas to give equal representation to such African-American actors as Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson and Hispanic talent such as Rodriguez) matches its ability to link locations with markets. The globe-trotting crew have stamps on their passports from Abu Dhabi, the Dominican Republic and Tokyo, and the presence of Djimon Hounsou takes care of some of the African territories. A shoot in India seems unlikely, however, given the general traffic situation.
The impressive stunts take the franchise many laps forward in its seventh edition, but the attempt to layer the ultra-macho action with emotion and give nearly every character his or her moment is disastrous. Only Russell, whose craggy-faced charm and twinkle haven’t abandoned him despite his advancing years, speaks like a normal member of the human race rather than a crash test dummy.
Russell’s government spook pushes the series into a zone better suited to the Bond/Bourne films and Mission: Impossible. Will Part Eight take Dominic and company into Star Trek territory, where space is the final frontier? One of the enduring images of Furious 7 is of a red Lykan Hypersport crashing through one skyscraper and then the next. Abu Dhabi today, Venus tomorrow? You read it here first.
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The single most important contribution of the Fast and Furious franchise is to push the limits of what cars are capable of. Despite notching up seven editions, the real heroes of the never-ending saga – the stunt directors – keep coming up with new, jaw-dropping ways to prove that gravity is a conspiracy of science.
Even Jason Statham, who plays Dominic’s implacable adversary in Furious 7 and no stranger to the joys of vrooming vehicles and death-tempting behaviour, has to acknowledge that his Transporter series has nothing on this lot. His character suffers the worst kind of ignominy conceivable in this movie’s universe: he is pummelled to the ground and buried under rubble.
Never say die
Of course, Statham will probably survive and return in the eighth edition, which is scheduled for 2017. Luke Evans’s Owen Shaw appeared to have met his maker in Fast & Furious 6, but here he is on a hospital bed, waiting to be resuscitated and launched back into the saddle for more.
Statham’s Deckard, Owen’s vengeful brother, provides one of two plot points in the new movie, which has been directed by James Wan (The Conjuring). Even as Deckard prevents Dominic (Vin Diesel) from rekindling his relationship with the amnesiac Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Brian (Paul Walker) from settling into domesticity with Dominic’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), the crew is reassembled for the apocryphal “last job” involving the rescue of a bikini-clad hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel).
Urged on by Kurt Russell’s self-described government functionary Mr Nobody, Dominic and company get down the movie’s real business: delivering action sequences that are utterly preposterous and therefore entirely satisfying. Cars fly in the best-realised sequence in Azerbaijan, while Abu Dhabi’s glass-fronted architecture takes some welcome knocks in the portion of the movie that stars India’s very own Ali Fazal as an Arab.
The world is not enough
The franchise’s sensitivity to its international audiences (it is one of the few big-budget extravaganzas to give equal representation to such African-American actors as Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson and Hispanic talent such as Rodriguez) matches its ability to link locations with markets. The globe-trotting crew have stamps on their passports from Abu Dhabi, the Dominican Republic and Tokyo, and the presence of Djimon Hounsou takes care of some of the African territories. A shoot in India seems unlikely, however, given the general traffic situation.
The impressive stunts take the franchise many laps forward in its seventh edition, but the attempt to layer the ultra-macho action with emotion and give nearly every character his or her moment is disastrous. Only Russell, whose craggy-faced charm and twinkle haven’t abandoned him despite his advancing years, speaks like a normal member of the human race rather than a crash test dummy.
Russell’s government spook pushes the series into a zone better suited to the Bond/Bourne films and Mission: Impossible. Will Part Eight take Dominic and company into Star Trek territory, where space is the final frontier? One of the enduring images of Furious 7 is of a red Lykan Hypersport crashing through one skyscraper and then the next. Abu Dhabi today, Venus tomorrow? You read it here first.
