Poignant But Franchise Excess At Its Worst

Rating: 4/10 (17 April 2015)

The lifeblood and virtually only redeeming factor in this film-- aside from a couple of the car sequences--is the emotional backbone of character continuity. Elephant in the room, Paul Walker but also Diesel, Rodriguez, etc. Without that, this is just an absurd maelstrom of cars and bullets and buffoonery. Most of the action is just staged chaos, most of the humor is unfunny and most of the story is contrived setups for the action, as well as emotional exploitation.
Granted, one should not go into this film expecting anything different from all of that, but even so I think that this film can basically be filed under "escalate by any means possible." The ending hits the bittersweet beats that the audience expects, and that alone is worth something, but the couple of hours leading up to the ending constitute a a big, crazy mess, entertaining perhaps depending on one's tastes but not anything worth high praise. Take that for what it is.