Furious 7

Furious 7 (2015)

83% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 172 reviews)

Runtime: 137 minutes

Directed by: James Wan

Starring: The usual crew plus such people as Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Tony Jaa

From: Universal

Yesterday I was finally able to see this; I shouldn't use that term as it just came out Thursday night but by the time I saw it many people I know (whether casually or otherwise) had already checked it out. Generally it's rated pretty highly but sad to say, I don't feel the same way about it, aside from a great ending. The Letterboxd review is below and I'll return Tuesday night.

Eventually I'll likely put together a list which will contain my reviews and ratings of all 7 movies in this franchise. Most of the reviews are on the short side (I may watch some of them again before I compile such a list) but at least you can still follow the ratings and see that I thought the 1st and 4th were a little better than fine, 2 and 3 were bad, and 5 & 6 I rate quite highly as even though they were dopey movies they were SO entertaining. Thus, I had high hopes for 7 and even with the unspeakable tragedy that hit during production I was still hoping for the best.

Well... I certainly understand why there are many that love this. My issues with this are a matter of opinion; like I said the last two were pretty stupid when it comes to things like logic. But, I was able to ignore such things and enjoy the ride. Here, it broke for me and it was just too dumb. I realize how difficult it was to complete this considering the aforementioned tragedy and such things as certain actors not having much time for their roles.

With this, though, it seemed like they were more concerned about topping what they had done previously rather than writing a story that makes sense or making sure that characters don't just pop up out of nowhere as if they read ahead in the script and knew they had to be at a city hours away as their opponents were there... also, what a waste of Ronda Rousey in what was a small role; Iggy Azalea, thank Christ her role was only like 10 seconds long! Boy, did people turn against her-for good reason, as she's racist trash-between the start of filming and when this came out.

What is a bigger sin in my eyes is the way that this was shot. The first two Insidious movies and The Conjuring are good to great but James Wan deciding that this movie needed to have shaky cam and rapid fire editing during the action scenes... I had heard beforehand this would be the case but even if it didn't I would have realized it while watching the film. I usually don't like such things so that was disappointing. There's still some great action scenes; I just couldn't always make out what was even going on. It makes me sad that is still a common trend in modern action cinema.

Despite what I said I did not hate this movie. Like I said there's still some memorable action scenes, funny moments throughout and the contributions of people like Kurt Russell and Tony Jaa were pretty nice. I just wish I could have had a blast with this like I did 5 and 6. To be honest, the reason why I have it even at 3 stars is the ending, which was as emotional as I had heard and some in the audience were teary-eyed. It was a great way to say goodbye to a friend and to write off that character in a great way. I do not have any complaints there.

I just hope that when the 8th film comes out (this has already made at least 380 million dollars worldwide at the time I am reviewing this! More sequels is a no-brainer) there will be less of what I thought were the mistakes made here... although the large crowd I saw this with seemed to love it so maybe I am in the wrong here.