Worth it for the ending

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2015)

If there's anything that would haunt this film, it's the death of series mainstay Paul Walker. Though it's been probably ten years since I last saw one of these films, I decided to see this seventh entry out of curiosity: how would they handle Walker's death? Would it profoundly affect the movie's premise? The answer is mostly no. Furious 7 never devolves into a trauermarsch of sorts and that's probably a good thing as drama was never this series' strong suit.
Like I said, I didn't see some of the previous entries in the series, but the film is very watchable even so. So basically, some guy, Deckard Shaw, is angry about the main crew hospitalizing his brother, Owen, and he wants his revenge. He kills one of them, off-screen mind you, and puts another in the hospital and blows up Dominic's home, though no one dies. This spurs the crew into action. But wait, there's more. Turns out a group of secret government agents led by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) are after a super-duper hacking device called God's Eye, that hacks every possible camera in the world to constantly narrow down a person's location. A hacker known as Ramsey developed it and is captured by a Somalian terrorist, Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou). Mr. Nobody makes a deal with the crew: help him retrieve God's Eye and they can use it to pinpoint Deckard Shaw's location. But wait, there's more! There's also a subplot involving Letty and Dom's relationship. She suffers from amnesia and, though he's a teddy bear towards her, she has doubts about how this'll affect their relationship. But waitthere's more!! There's another subplot involving Brian (Paul Walker) struggling to adapt to being a minivan-driving dad: he misses the bullets and all that.
Man, I don't think the film could be anymore jam-packed with drama in between all the T&A and fancy cars. And therein lies the rub: the film tries too much with only moderate success. The inevitable result is that most of the drama feels like an afterthought. This ironically affects Brian's storyline the most, though you'd think—this being his last appearance—they'd pull out all the dramatic stops on this one. No, the storyline that receives the most attention is Letty and Dom's relationship, but despite Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez's valiant efforts, it's hard to care since it doesn't affect the main storyline. There's never a sense of danger of one of them dying or any of the others for that matter.
This leads us to the action, which is mostly pretty good, but, like I said, suffers from a lack of tension. Anyone watching this series knows it's all about insane stunts and so on which is fine as it allows for scenes like a car flying from one skyscraper to the next, but you'll not find any real tension here.
This leads us to the villain, Deckard, and the same problem applies here. Because the action never generates a sense of dread, of you genuinely fearing for the characters' lives, Deckard loses his potency as well. Not to mention the fact that, due to the gargantuan amount of plot, he rears his head less and less as the film goes on. He's at least more potent a villain than Jakande, who spends most of his time barking orders through his bleached goatee. Forgettable doesn't even begin to describe it.
Yet, despite all my whining, the film has its moments. Some of the action is pretty fun to watch and there's some good comic relief, not to mention a nicely symbolic tribute to Walker at the end. Despite all my complaints about the story, I gotta hand it to them: at least they didn't take the cheap route and integrate Walker's death into the narrative. Can you imagine if Brian had died midway and we'd get shots of the crew sobbing and what not? Not even a 0 to 100 in 3 seconds sports car would top the speed at which my respect for the series would drop. Anyway, for better and for worse, Furious 7's got it all. If you don't go in expecting Walker's death to change the series into something it's not and never will be and instead expect something akin to a summary of what's made the series so popular you'll probably have a good time.
Plus, Kurt Russell absolutely dominates as Mr. Nobody, so there's that too.