At the start of his career, James Wan changed gears after two horror movies with the action/revenge story
Death Sentence. The end results were dismal to say the least. Going back to Horror, Wan delivered not one, not two, but three successful spooky movies. For his seventh project, Wan tries again at the action genre with the seventh installment of
The Fast and the Furious franchise.
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| Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Shaw (Jason Statham) meet. |
Following the events of
Fast & Furious 6, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) and the rest of the Furious team have put their high-octane adventures behind until Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of the villain they defeated in F6, begins hunting them down for putting his brother in a coma. As witnessed in
The Fast and the Furious:Tokyo Drift, Shaw means business and later puts muscle-man Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in the hospital. Out of their league and out of options,Toretto is recruited by the shadowy agent Mr. Nobody (a charismatic Kurt Russell). In exchange for helping him on a classified mission against a mercenary (Djimon Hounsou), he will assist Torreto on tracking down Shaw. Along with Brian, Toretto once again recruits his team including Tej Parker (Ludacris), Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson) and his wife Letty (Michele Rodriguez) for another wild ride.
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| Say what? |
I'm tempted to put
The Fast and Furious franchise in the same league as Micheal Bay's
Transformers. Both are over-the-top action movies, have lingering shots on scantly-clad woman, and the real stars being the flashy cars. It has an enormous fanbase and its not hard to see why with the automotive adrenaline and star-studded cast. I'm just that one guy who isn't part of it.
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| Toretto and Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) |
The best way to view this movie is not much for the story or characters but for the filmmaking. A film franchise sometimes doesn't have the same director on board for every film and its interesting to see how each filmmaker adds their signature touch to each installment. Whether its Alfonso Cuaron, the director of
Gravity, adding his long tracking shots in
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, or Justin Lin, who did four
Fast & Furious movies, include his high-speed hallmark to
Star Trek Beyond.
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| You know it's Toretto behind the wheel if it has a splash of red on it. |
Seeing James Wan's style in the
Fast & Furious universe did make for an entertaining watch and shows he far he's come from
Death Sentence. The man can do action with the mountain chase scene being my favorite part even with
The A-Team tank logic with the cars para-jumping.
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| Romantic and impulsive. No wonder the color suits them both. |
The color red is usually associated with an antagonistic force in his movies and we do see it with some of the Abu Dubai guards and when Torretto and Mr. Nobody are ambushed by Shaw in a dark warehouse. Toretto and Letty bear the color in many scenes representing the fierce and wild drive they have behind the wheel and the aggressive lengths they go to protect their family. In a funny bit of foreshadowing, Brian's son is seen playing with a red toy car with his dad exclaiming cars don't fly. Wait til he gets to Abu Dubai.
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| Paul Walker as Brian O'Connor |
To say
Furious 7 performed well at the box-office would be an understatement. It is the highest grossing of the Fast & Furious franchise, became the fifth highest grossing movie in 2015 and is the seventh highest grossing movie of all time. The movie also marked the final role of Paul Walker who tragically died before production wrapped up. His brothers Cody and Caleb stepped in as body doubles and digitally rendered to his likeness with the final tribute at the end beautifully done.
Furious 7 may not be my favorite from Wan but his style makes it another worth watching just for that alone.
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