Huge disappointment after the last two movies

Rating: 4/10 (2 April 2015)

Fast & Furious 7 feels like an episode of a soap opera that has been on air way too long. Almost all of the fun and excitement that Justin Lin somehow managed to bring to the series with 5 and 6 is gone and instead we get a messy series of very confusing and nauseating action scenes that are so over the top that they wouldn't feel out of place in a comic book movie. Some will like that, I get it. But I miss the times when every movie did not end in a bloated CGI-set piece that goes on for 30 minutes and everything is destroyed. Also the word "nauseating" is very important. During most of the action scenes I had no idea what was happening on screen thanks to the shaking and the editing. James Wan also likes to do this thing where he tilts the camera which I'll admit sometimes looks good (I liked this in The Conjuring) but it DOES NOT work here. I sat pretty front in the theater and whenever the camera tilted like that I felt nauseous. That is not a problem everybody will have but I'd say don't sit very front in the theater. The storyline is extremely confusing and FF7 feels like two movies edited into one. I'm sorta willing to forgive them for it for two reasons. 1) It's clearly because Paul Walker died. 2) It's a Fast & Furious movie. What I won't give a pass on is bad action and Furious 7 is filled with that. Isn't that the big thing about action movies? They should have good action scenes. I also think that the change from Lin to James Wan was a bad call. FF7 looks and sounds like a Fast & Furious movie but Wan just doesn't nail the tone. There are couple exciting parts. Whenever The Rock shows up the movie is suddenly good. It's too bad he's in it for like 10 minutes. Tony Jaa also makes a brief appearance. He sure can fight, too bad whoever was filming and editing those fights did a terrible job. Now I saved the best for last. KURT RUSSELL is in Furious 7. Kurt Russell. Perhaps my favorite actors of all time. He has a very brief role but he looks like he's having lots of fun. He could have totally phoned in that performance, it's a really small role but like The Rock whenever Kurt Russell gets to be Kurt Russell he just lights up the screen. He has one scene that is actually so badass that I actually got chills. Too bad it's like 5 seconds long. So how to fix Fast & Furious 8? Strip it down a lot. No need for all that excessive action. If it were up to me, I would just do a buddy cop movie with Kurt Russell and The Rock.