Beyond Extreme

Rating: Null/10 (5 April 2015)

The Fast and The Furious franchise has gone way out of hand in this seventh installment, as it begins with its main villain leaving an entirely wrecked hospital which is done by him, a one man army who is about to take down Toretto and his team. And their mission gets to involve even more crazier stunts than ever, and these characters often mentioning about how they fully acknowledged of what they've been through. Just like what the last two films had promised, these movies will get dumber and dumber, but at the same time a lot exciting. And it is, though the direction kind of overdoes his own style, which can cause minor distraction through the fun that is already happening. But this movie is relentless in ever way, it may not make sense on what they're doing, but again it's always been better this way.
Once again, the team is hooked up with a mission impossible, but this time out of revenge from its enemy. There isn't much new other than expanding the scale of the action's utter insanity, but before all that, the movie concentrates more on the personal life of its heroes, like Letty unable to feel normal in her old life and Brian who cannot let go of the action despite of the need of staying with his own family. These and the comedy are the only human element containing in this film because once they are in the field, they totally become superheroes that can push any limit and incapable of dying unless the movie demands them to. There is still suspense, of course, but the people who keeps thinking about the logic of its impossibility will have a hard time, indeed. Otherwise, it's just sick fun.
The plot doesn't make much of a sense either, but then, it is written to create a set of outrageous stunts, as they look for a drive that can track down their enemy who is already behind them, constantly. So they go to these random places just to setup a particular action scene and then proceed. But it isn't only about cars, there's also cameos of great on screen fighters like Tony Jaa and Ronda Rousey who have sidelined action scenes with one of the crew while the main characters are driving their way, either being chased by more enemies or jumping between buildings with broken brakes. It's over-the-top, for the good reasons, of course.
James Wan is more known in the horror genre, but I do remember his other action movie, Death Sentence, was a pretty exciting film. Here, he does plenty of styles with prominent shots that highlights cars, hot women and locations, even more. The action also has too much quick cut editing, which can be exhausting; last helmer of the series, Justin Lin did it cleaner, but otherwise, Wan made a larger sense of scale in his action, anyway. And for the cast, Vin Diesel once again gruff and broods, but that already defines this character. Jason Statham plays the main villain at his coldest. The film is smart enough to give Dwayne Johnson's character a little break at leading their mission to bring a cooler guy like Kurt Russell to take his place.
Furious 7 ends with a tribute of the late Paul Walker, where you can really feel how the cast, especially Vin Diesel, love and missed the actor, a scene that indicates that their friendship will forever live on, even if he departs to another lane. You will understand if you've actually seen it, but that scene alone made it worth it, for a film that is already given itself too much action movie pleasure. But these movies haven't come to this emotional side that really felt this genuine. Of course most of it is loud and crazy, but once it settles to this part, it immediately makes it up for the whole experience.