Freaking Insane! and a beautiful tribute..

Rating: 8/10 (4 April 2015)

I can never recall a time in my life i could have said i was looking forward to a 7th installment of a movie.. i was young when The Fast and The Furious was released and if i went back to when i first saw it I never would have felt a 7th film would have been good.. but Fast & Furious 7 proved me wrong and it turned out to be one of the most action packed, over the top, ridiculous and downright entertaining movies for a long time. The film and its crew had to overcome a tragic and hard problem which was the sad passing of series veteran Paul Walker. I knew him only from this series but i have heard he was one of the nicest guys working in Hollywood. The ending of this film, without spoilers, was the most perfect and beautiful tribute that could have been done and I think that if he had seen this movie himself then he would be proud. It brought me to tears and i'm not afraid to admit that.
Furious 7 picks up directly after the events of the 6th movie (sounds ridiculous saying that) and we are introduced to Deckard Shaw played by Jason Statham who is on the path to revenge after Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew took out his brother. What i like about this film is that it actually makes Tokyo Drift relevant. In my opinion 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift are not good movies and they had no reason to exist but the 5th movie brought back characters from the 2nd who are some of the best and this one takes place after the events of Tokyo Drift starting with the death of Hans who originally died in the third film.. its a confusing timeline but the beauty of Fast & Furious is that it knows this and we as an audience have a lot of fun untangling the timeline which could not work with any other series. Anyway, this leads us onto 2 revenge paths with Statham after the crew and the crew after him. In order to defeat him they must get the "God's eye" which is a device that can find anyone in the world in seconds, hired by Kurt Russell on top form we are given a thrill ride which is quite possibly the most entertaining film of the franchise yet.
The film is the most ridiculous and insane too.. we have seen the crew take down a huge plane on the biggest runway in the world and destroy half of Brazil with a huge safe. Here we are treated to Skydiving Cars and a huge street race/fight involving drones but the most insane part for me was Vin Diesel and Paul Walker jumping across 3 skyscrapers in Abu Dubai in a supercar that seemed like it was built for this madness. Seriously, it was intense and i was on the edge of my seat. The only thing i missed in this film was more of Dwayne Johnson. He appeared in Fast Five as Hobbs and became my favourite part of the series but for a lot of this film he is out of action.. but this is after a brutal and downright awesome fight between himself and Statham. I knew that from the moment Statham receives an uppercut to the face and gets up to continue fighting that this would be incredibly unrealistic.. who could ever survive that. Plus the climax was incredibly well done considering the circumstances. It would have been no easy job to continue without Walker and you could tell where things had to be changed but i will not criticise for this because I respect that they managed to get the film finished.. plus seeing Dwayne Johnson handle a minigun like it was a leafblower was absolutely incredible.
I feel lot less focus was given to the driving sequences as cars were either flying or we had extended fight sequences.. these were well shot but felt a bit repetitive because the same camera trick where the camera flips upside down was used which looked cool but in my opinion happened too much. Other than that I liked this installment a hell of a lot.. Michelle Rodriguez and Ronda Housey going bare knuckles was a treat to see in particular. If the series ended now i would be incredibly pleased as I'm sure a lot of fans would too. A beautiful monologue from Vin Diesel.brought me and many others to tears and it will be an ending to remember for years to come. A beautiful tribute to Paul and an amazing ending to a freaking insane movie! RIP Paul Walker