When Too much of everything ruins the party

Rating: 5/10 (2 April 2015)

Sure, a lot of people are going to like cars falling out of the sky. Sure they going to like things blowing up over and over again. Some will find "Awesome" the special effects. Most will.
Not me. The fast and furious franchise has gone trough some changes since it first installment. Since the return of the original cast in the fourth movie, the tone has changed, and "popcorn" action privileged over a strong story. But it was well done. Still keeping the "buddy-touch" the charismatic characters, raising one from the death in the 6 th movie, and also keeping some sentiment.
But every movie, kept going in a stronger direction of "you not believe what you will see", but also in more and more nonsense. As the balance was still fine in the fourth, the fifth had just some "over the top" situations, The 6 th, was for me limit of "believable moments", but OK, it was still fun.
Now, the movie in unbelievable from start to end. The situations are so overdone, and have no gram of realism. On the contrary what happen to Paul Walker in real life, the can fall from heights, crashed in cars many time, they will all be running around as nothing ever happen. Action is fine with me, but please give us a story we can believe in!
Then I not know how Paul Walker death affected the final result. First, on many occasions, I had the impression it was not him, which of course is true. The theft of the car in the building, the fight with the Thai movie-star, Walker's face was either not really visible, or then not realistic, like a video game character. Sure, because of the circumstances, still well done, but visible.
Where it affects probably the most is the "buddy feeling" of the movie and the dialogs between him and "Vin Diesel", were almost non existent. Vin is deciding everything, Walker, is just there to execute, probably because, their conversations were not all shot yet. And that is more difficult to artificially create, when people are not running or driving around.
Loud Fireworks, crashing cars, a lot of action, not always make an exiting movie, like mentioned before, especially when what is happening is so much over the top. You not fear for your heroes any more, because, and I not say this ironically, they are not people of flesh and blood any more, but super heroes like Superman, that seem stronger then a normal human being. And that was for me the strength of F&F before, just ordinary guys, getting in a difficult situation.