They were dealt a bad hand, and did the best they could. It's disappointing that their best was still terrible.

Rating: 4/10 (8 August 2015)

There is no doubt that the studio went through a hard time trying to complete the film after the tragic death of actor Paul Walker. It's never easy to as seen in other films in the same situation. The only other choice was to scrap the film altogether; however, if that was the case, we wouldn't have to worry about reviewing it.
If you take into account this difficulty while watching Furious Seven, you'll see that the studio actually did a great job piecing together what they had into a watchable film. They were dealt a bad hand, but they finished the best that they could. If I were to take this into account when rating the film it would be a solid 7 or 8.
Fortunately, I'm not going to rate a movie based on any other factors but the movie itself; and with that: It's disappointing to say that this series' quality has drastically decreased. Furious Seven can easily be argued to be the worst in the series--yes, even before 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Some of the action scenes, albeit nice to look at, abandon any realm of realism that existed in previous episodes. It seems as if the producers decided to get more and more ridiculous with each passing sequel. Considering their films have made well over 3 billion dollars, it's understandable that they would continue. If you as a viewer are fine with watching a film whose only positive feature is a few scenes of action absurdities, look no further. Feel free to exit this review here. But if you're a viewer who wants a bit more out of a film, then you may want to pass on this one and look elsewhere.
The plot jumps around, the scenes appear a tad out of place (given the death of walker) and the new characters are given no development that connects you to them or the plot itself. Perhaps worse of all, the acting of some of the cast was definitely poor; less than what I have seen in previous episodes. Some scenes give off a forced-sentimentality feeling. It's almost as if the film was rushed. All of these things made watching this movie too distracting and withdrew me from the even sub-par immersion that I expect a film to bring me into.
When your movie seems less like fun and more like work to watch, something is terribly wrong. This studio may continue to care more about the profit than the quality of the film, but if they decide to make a sequel (which they would be crazy to) and care about more than just that, they should start learning alchemy and turn trash into gold.