A movie full of one-liners, seriousness and symbolics

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2015)

I liked part 5 and 6 from the series. Sure I liked part 1 and 2 because I was young at that time and I liked the car tuning and racing. But then I grew up and it kinda lost my interest. Then they did Tokyo drift: different scene, different actors, and later on I started to appreciate the series when we arrived at part 5 and 6. They were funny, full of action and not dead-serious, and they were good guys doing not-so-good things (stealing the forbidden fruits so to speak). In other words a nice escape from realism and just be a block of testosterone for 1.5 to 2 hours. The characters in these movies did what they loved and did it for who they loved.
Part 7 really annoyed me. I'm not gonna give the movie 1 stars, because people still did put in a lot of hard work and the ending of the movie was beautiful. But I also mean that literally: the ending was the best part of the movie, because that meant the movie was finally over. But also because Vin Diesel actually came on screen as being a human being instead of being a one-liner robot trying to look tough and wise non-stop. If your character on-screen isn't impressed by anything anymore, or touched by anything, it's pretty hard to be touched as a viewer as well by that same character.
The movie was full of hard action (no soft, sweet explosions but rough and raw ones, like the sound of metal clinging), and things like sympathy and humor seem to be missing totally. It felt as if the characters had to do this mission, without really wanting it or put their heart into it. I experienced it as a superficial one-liner movie in which no real character development took place. They wanted to portrait Paul as a family man, but how I experienced this was as if they put in the script: "Paul playing with family, make 3 turns swinging kid in the air, smile for 5 seconds, move on to the next one-liner from Vin Diesel, move on to the next action-scene".
Of course I know these movies aren't known for their realism or in- depth characters, but at least their characters were somewhat real/authentic/understandable previously. But even the joke-man in this movie looks so serious all the time as if he needs to take a dump during the entire movie. I'm not even gonna discuss his awkward party-scene in Abu Dhabi.
The role of Kurt Russell is also fitting for the name his character gives himself in the movie: Mr. Nobody. He acts super-superficial, as if this movie was a nice little extra (financially) for Russell, but there's no character growth or identification when compared to Hobbs in the previous parts for example. The only character growth you'll see is that when Mr. Nobody is shot and seriously injured, he promises Vin Diesel he will switch from Belgian beer to Corona's. Seriously. I feel they had a script and just had to include things like Mr. Nobody and "God's Eye" just to fill up some gaps.
And let's not forget Hobbs who in this movie is completely unbelievable (in a bad way). He rips his plaster by flexing his muscles, he sees a building explode nearby and doesn't even wink, he just goes full Clint Eastwood-mode and says: "Toretto". His little girl is in the hospital-chamber when all of this happens and he just walks up and says: daddy's gotta go to work. Again it feels very forced, as if he said: You are not really my kid, but the script said we needed Hobbs to have a kid (for making him human or something?) for 10 seconds, so we put you in this room. Now beat it, because I'm gonna steal an ambulance and with it bring down a drone, then take a mini-gun, then shoot at a helicopter, and finish the job like a wild wild west revolver gunslinger. I mean when someone would actually say stuff like that it would be funny, but somehow it didn't connect with me when i was watching it.
So, in my opinion: this movie is trying to be funny when it shouldn't be, overacting-tough when it should be human, and way too serious when it could be funny. Feels like it's trying too hard and therefore misses its mark. Great ending though.