Furious 7: Jumping the Shark

Rating: 6/10 (15 September 2015)

I wanted to like this. Really, I did! As Paul Walkers final film, I was hoping they would have done something interesting and different with the story and they did. But not in a good way.
In essence, they tried to turn Furious 7 into Mission Impossible. Before very long in the movie, the gang are working for "Da Man" - in this case Kurt Russel - and helping him recover a piece of technology for the security forces. Said technology will then be used to help them find Jason Statham's character, who is out to get them.
Sounds reasonable, right? Unfortunately, this premise is quickly overwhelmed with utterly ridiculous nonsense such as cars parachuting out of a plane to land perfectly on a winding mountain road; Coaches armed with mini-guns down the sides like some kind of road-going galleon; Reinforced concrete parking structures that collapse like they are sandcastles on a beach; People fighting and hitting each other in the face with plumber's wrenches and barely even feeling it.
You get the idea? It is ridiculous. As if they just decided to ramp up the stupid and to hell with it.
So is it really that bad? Well, I guess if you have no understanding of how the real world works - physics, gravity and so on - then I suppose it is a decent enough action film. The problem really lies with how this movie takes itself far too seriously. None of the aforementioned excesses would be out of place in a comedy spy film. Yet here, they just stand out. Instead of saying "Whoah! Did they just do that?" you end up saying "You've gotta be effing shitting me!" Furious 7 is a parody of its own franchise, piling on the impossible action and saying "To hell with the consequences". After the previous outing, I didn't think they could make it any more unbelievable, but they have.
The result is an unsatisfying movie where nobody dies except the bad guys and everyone has Neo-like abilities when it comes to defying gravity and physics. It's just too much. Far from being a fitting send-off to the franchise, it just ends up teeth-grittingly annoying and tiresome.
So was there anything good? Well, there was some interesting camera-work in the early fight sequences, with the camera following characters as they rolled around. Literally the camera rolled with them. Quite a nice effect, actually. The car driving was, as usual, enjoyable to watch, though the stunts were less so.
However, other than that, there is little to recommend this movie apart from the silliness. If you've seen other F&F movies, this one is just more of the same, but done in such an over-the-top manner as to make it tedious, not exciting.
SUMMARY: Beyond ridicule. Too much excess that no one tried to reign in. Tries to reinvent itself as a spy-action movie. Not so much Mission Impossible, as Mostly Impossible.