Furious 7

FURIOUS 7

** SPOILERS **

For Paul

How many movie franchises can boast that the fifth, sixth and seventh films are the best in the series? Star Wars... maybe, if The Force Awakens meets the standard of the Original Trilogy. And even then you can argue the prequels are actually the fourth, fifth and sixth films made in real time. The Batman series arguably... if Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy counts as Batman 5, 6, and 7, but they share no continuity with the previous Batman movies. No, the Fast and the Furious franchise speeds off with this unusual crown and leaves everyone else in the dust. Furious 7 unleashes another high-octane, balls-to-the-wall thrill ride of jaw-dropping, forehead-slapping giddiness. Once more, for one final ride, Vin Diesel, the late Paul Walker, and their ragtag family of speedsters gun it through a globe-hopping series of death races. Furious 7 picks up where Furious 6 left off, delivers breakneck, sensational escalation, and ties together the entire saga while sending their fleet of hopped-up super cars where no cars have gone before.

At the conclusion of Furious 6, Jason Statham emerged as the series' new Big Bad. Statham plays the rogue British assassin older brother of Luke Evans, whom Diesel and his crew defeated in 6, and he takes the first step of his vengeance by murdering one of Diesel's crew, Sung Kang. (Kang and Gal Gadot, who heroically perished in the airplane car chase in Furious 6, are credited but appear only in photographs and flashbacks.) Statham is basically Furious 7's version of a Terminator; has the simplest motivation possible: kill Vin Diesel. He blows up Diesel's beloved LA home and then he never stops coming and keeps trying to kill Diesel with cars, guns, rocket launchers, grenades, etc. Statham runs afoul of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, the jacked-up government agent who was once Diesel's enemy but now positively loves the guy. Their fight scene is the best in the film, with The Rock unleashing his patented WWE finishing move the Rock Bottom, to no avail. Statham hospitalizes The Rock, who sadly sits out most of the movie, but Johnson hilariously flexes his arm out of his cast to join the ultraviolent third act and do his part to lay the smack down on the bad guys with a helicopter gun, exactly the same way his character Roadblock would in the other franchise he helped revitalize, G.I. Joe.

With The Rock on the DL, a perpetually amused Kurt Russell steps in as a new mysterious government agent with worldwide jurisdictional omnipotence. Russell enlists Diesel and his team on a globetrotting quest to find a terrorist (Djimon Hounsou) who kidnapped a mysterious hacker (the fetching Nathalie Emmanuel from Game of Thrones) and the program she created, the God's Eye, which can turn every device in the world with a camera into a weapon. Diesel needs the God's Eye to locate Statham -- but why? Everywhere Diesel goes, Statham is there like a Wile E. Coyote brandishing weapons. There is no time to ask such questions however, as there are cars to drive and exotic locales to visit and demolish. Once Diesel and his team (his family, Diesel always corrects) are reassembled, including Walker, Diesel's amnesiac lady love Michelle Rodriguez, cool techno-wizard Ludacris, and the irrepressible perpetual joke machine Tyrese -- always the comedic MVP of this whole shebang -- they waste no time blazing off on another increasingly insane series of shoot-em-up, crash-em-up, run-em-off-a-cliff car chases.

In Furious 7, you will believe cars can fly. If not fly, then spend ridiculous amounts of time defying gravity. The giddily-ridiculous sequence of Diesel and his team being airdropped in their cars over Uzbekistan is topped only by Diesel and Walker stealing an 8 million dollar super car and driving it through the three tallest buildings in Abu Dhabi. Sky's the limit, literally, for the cars in Furious 7. While in Abu Dhabi, Rodriguez battles Ronda Rousey in a main event super brawl echoing when Diesel battled The Rock in Fast Five (the winner of which is in dispute, depending on whom you ask.) While Diesel and The Rock always come off as equals, it's a little less believable Rodriguez would last even 14 seconds in a fight against Rousey. Ah well, who really asks for believability from Furious 7? The third act is a demolition derby all across the streets of Los Angeles ("The streets we know best," Diesel proudly growls), causing billions of property damage as Walker and friends race their cars against Hounsou's attack helicopter and missile launching drone while Diesel and Statham battle it out car-to-car and fist-to-fist. The news reports declaring Los Angeles to be in the grip of "what can only be described as 'vehicular warfare'" more or less covers it.

For all its crazy, slam bang, super fun action, helmed this outing by James Wan, his spinning slow motion camera moves stepping in for franchise maestro Justin Lin, Furious 7 never forgets its beating heart. The themes of family and loyalty, usually bluntly stated by Diesel, are what drive this franchise. ("I see no fear in you, only loyalty," are how Emmanuel deftly sums up Diesel and his crew whens she joins up.) Furious 7 is also perpetually aware, as the audience is, of the elephant in the car -- that Paul Walker passed away during filming last year. Walker's character is unique in the Fast and the Furious franchise as he's the only one with a family; he's happily married to Diesel's sister Jordana Brewster and a father with a young son and a daughter on the way. Rather than conjure up a violent demise for Walker, which they did tease when Walker is trapped in a literal cliffhanger and escapes thanks to a bravura save by Rodriquez, the character who was previously dead but is now alive and vital, Furious 7 concludes in a meta way with a touching, uplifting tribute to Paul Walker. Through flashbacks to the past 14 years and 5 previous Fast and the Furious movies starring Walker (God, everyone looked so young in 2001) and by narrowing the focus down to just the bond of brotherhood between Diesel and Walker, they and we are able to say a heartfelt goodbye to the handsome, heroic leading man we lost much too soon. Not a dry eye in the house when Walker's car drives off into the sunset. "Everything's gonna be different now," muses Tyrese and it's sadly true. They and we lost a big part of our Fast family. Unlike the endless array of cars in this franchise, our brother Paul Walker can never be replaced. But the Furious franchise is gonna keep driving, as it absolutely must. See you all at the next family reunion, Furious 8.

Join Dominic Toretto's family. #lifegoals #Furious7
— John Orquiola (@BackoftheHead) April 4, 2015

Fast & Furious 6

FAST AND FURIOUS 6

** SPOILERS **

Fast & Furious 6 (or just Furious 6 according to the opening credits and the preferences of four-time Fast & Furious director Justin Lin) is a car-smashing, forehead-slapping, sensationally good time at the movies. Even in this sixth outing, Furious 6 proves there's a shocking amount of gas and nitrous in the tank of the Fast & Furious franchise. Furious 6 gleefully reunites the entire cast from Fast Five, the "family" of high-octane international car racing criminals headed by Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, which includes Jordanna Brewster, Ludacris, Tyrese, Gal Gadot, and Sung Kang. And of course, their cars. Diesel's crew absconded with hundreds of millions of dollars in Fast Five and are now living the high life in glamorous locales all across the world, from Spain, to Brazil, to Hong Kong, but they are wanted criminals in the United States and yearn to return home.

This time, their nemesis from Fast Five, The Rock, joined by new recruit Gina Carano, comes to Diesel's crew with a proposal to help him find international terrorist Luke Evans, who heads his own cartel of car racing mercenaries specializing in "vehicular warfare". Evans is trying to steal a Nightshade Device, a McGuffan that can render an entire nation "electronically blind". The Rock offers Diesel his own personal McGuffan: the whereabouts of Michelle Rodriguez, Diesel's one true love, who was seemingly killed in Fast Five, but is now an amnesiac running with Evan's villains. Luckily, The Rock commands some sort of international organization that has jurisdiction over the British authorities and Interpol. The Rock can even personally make deals that will give Diesel and his friends total amnesty to return to the U.S. if they can retrieve the Nightshade Device.

After a cheerful Ocean's Eleven-like "getting the gang back together" montage, Diesel's crew and The Rock's lawmen descend on London, and proceed to tear the streets of Old Blighty apart in a series of spectacular car chases that must have caused billions in property damage. Lin stages a series of action sequences that escalate in thrilling, totally unbelievable fashion, with hilarious, gasp-inducing stunts and miracle saves by Diesel, The Rock and Walker. At first Diesel's racing team is defeated by Evans' technology, which includes guns that can fire electrical nanobots that can disable cars. Evans himself drives an armored Formula One racing car that can launch other cars into the air when smashing into them headlong. Buggered by all this new tech, Diesel's group splits up into smaller groups in classic Justice League style to get some intel on Evans' and prepare to get back to the races.

Can Diesel reach Rodriguez and get her to realize who she is and how much Vin Diesel really loves her? Can Diesel's crew take on Evans' team in a balls-to-the-wall car race on the bridges of Spain, as Evans pilots a tank and smashes every car in his way? What about when an actually surprising betrayal occurs and Evans tries to escape aboard a transport plane, racing against Diesel's team on the world's longest airport runway? Can Diesel, Walker, and The Rock team up together and bring that plane down in flames? You'd better fucking believe it. Walker can even get himself secretly smuggled into a United States prison overnight, find out what really happened that caused Rodriguez to escape death but contract amnesia (her amnesia is never, ever questioned by anyone and no one ever asks to see her medical records), and return to London in time for the second and third crazy ass car chases.

For such a massive cast of characters and an absurd amount of action and exposition to address, Furious 6's screenplay by Chris Morgan is a miracle of structure, efficiently finding pieces of business for every single character in the cast where no one gets lost in the shuffle and every character contributes to move the story forward. (In all seriousness, Warner Bros. should take a hard look at Furious 6's structure as they try to figure out their Justice League movie. Therein lies the key to solving that puzzle.) Diesel oversees the proceedings with a calm, laid back confidence and bemusement. Walker, now a father with a newborn with Brewster, is an able number two, as ever. Diesel and Walker's bromance steadily anchors the whole shebang; it's heartwarming to see that after all these years, the love between those two is as strong as ever. But there's plenty of Diesel to go around, for Rodriguez, as well as for The Rock, who gets to tag team with Diesel in the final fight and even unleash a classic wrestling double team move: the Road Warriors' Doomsday Device. 

Everyone gets in on the wisecracking fun, no one moreso than Tyrese, a relentless comedy machine who steals every scene he's in and is the butt of everyone (mostly Ludacris') jokes. (Tyrese mocking The Rock for smelling like baby oil scores every time.) Gadot and Kang hang back on their own, a solid romantic unit happy to provide B team support, and putting themselves on the line to contribute and sacrifice themselves as necessary. Evans is a formidable villain up to the task of taking on all of these cartoon characters and never losing his edge. If there's a loser in Furious 6, it's Carano, who can beat up any man in her way but loses two separate fights to Rodriguez. Furious 6 also admirably sticks to the old maxim that if you introduce a grapple gun in act one, you get to fire that grapple gun in act three. (All the times Tyrese blunders firing that grapple gun don't count.) 

Brimming with callbacks to all of the previous films in the franchise, especially the original Fast and the Furious, Furious 6 comes full circle to seemingly end the saga in triumph as the best Fast & Furious movie of all. And just when you think the races are over, Furious 6 lobs one final fiery surprise over the closing credits, introducing the new Furious Big Bad and cranking up anticipation for the inevitable Furious 7. These Fast & Furious movies may seem expendable but the next one promises to be a brand new death race.