Wild and impressive

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2015)

This time around, the villain from the previous movie, Owen Shaw, is in a coma and his brother, Deckard (Statham) swears he will avenge him. So he breaks into Hobbs office to download info on Dom's team. A fantastic fight between Shaw and Hobbs ensues.
Meanwhile Dom and co. are living the quiet peaceful life until Shaw blows up Dom's house and kills Han. During the funeral Dom spots a dark car and chases it. It's Shaw. As they are about to confront each other some special forces team shows up and Shaw escapes.
Turns out the guy in charge (Russell) wants to make a deal with Dom. Some terrorist has grabbed an unknown hacker who has created Persons of Interest's The Machine that spies on everyone at all times. He wants Dom to retrieve the hacker and The Machine, here called God's Eye. In return Dom gets to use it to track down Shaw.
The hacker is being transported in some convoy in the Caucasus. That leads our team to parachute in cars no less, and go after the convoy. They find the hacker who turns out to be some girl. In the process they have to fight the terrorist's men and even Shaw appears for no good reason. Some cool fights with Tony Jaa ensue as well as some wild gravity-defying stunts.
So know they have The Machine right? Wrong. The hacker girl has stored it in a drive and given it to some guy in Abu Dhabi. Off they go then. But the guy doesn't have the drive anymore but sold it (?) to some super rich guy who has installed the drive in his super car (???). So now the crew crashes a fancy party in a high rise penthouse where the car is kept (?). They are caught and skinny Rodriguez has to take a beating from Rousey. Meanwhile Dom and Brian have no other choice than to take the car and escape, flying from one building to another and another.
OK, now they have The Machine, or is it Samaritan, and they track down Shaw. Shouldn't be too hard to grab him. But he's super special forces, and ambushes Dom's crew and the special ops guys and grabs God's Eye in the process.
Now our guys will try to set a trap for him in a LA. He does go for it and so does the terrorist who goes after them with a military chopper and a drone, while Brian has to face Jaa and Dom and Statham finally get to beat each other up. Hobbs, who been in the hospital all this time makes also appearance in Rambo fashion in the end.
Yes, there's a lot of story in the long Furious 7. So much that it could easily have been turned into 2 movies. Or they could have ended it after the Caucasus adventure.
This installment benefits greatly from director James Wan, someone who actually knows how to direct a movie. Some of the shots during the fights are amazing. All of the fighting scenes have some memorable moment and overall are really well done. It's not easy to impress with fight scenes these days, but Furious 7 does it. But it's not just the fight scenes. Granted that driving isn't much at the center of these movies anymore, what driving there is, is pretty good. And so are other stunts. The scene of Walker escaping from a bus hanging over a cliff is spectacular. So is the attention to detail as when a bad guy falls from his seat and nearly takes out Walker as he hangs from the bus's door. Or when Jaa and Walker race down stairs on a door.
Finally some of the cast has been trimmed, no Han, no Giselle, fewer other goofs, very little Elena. Instead they added a bunch of great villains--Statham who fortunately doesn't say a whole lot but looks menacing instead; they finally hired someone who can fight--Tony Jaa. And they hired someone who can act--Kurt Russell. There's Hounsou as well. It wouldn't have hurt to hire a second writer to add some dialogue. At least this time around, the dialogue isn't entirely embarrassing. There's still some silliness but less. Some of the humor does work though. No doubt there's plenty of room for more cuts in the cast--we could do without Brewster, Rodriguez, Bridges.
The unfortunate death of Walker would be a great opportunity to put an end to this series, while they're on top. Instead "Diesel" already warned us there are 3 more movies coming. Why? With Furious 7, the franchise grew up into a legitimate full-blown mega summer blockbuster. With that however, the prospect of where this series will go from here are dim. More and crazier stunts will drive it into lousy Michael Bay CGI territory. If they end up hiring more and bigger familiar faces, it'll end up being The Expendables On Wheels. I just hope they find the strength to not hire Bruce Willis. If they keep traveling around the world for missions it'll look like and urban team version of James Bond. The next movie would be the right time to return to the roots and go for something smaller and tighter. If they keep Wan on board they may have a chance.