Very emotional and nostalgic for the series' followers

Rating: 8/10 (4 April 2015)

About two years after the last movie, Dom jogs Letty's memory, but she's tired of it. Brian's now a good dad. Elena works with Hobbs. Hobbs catches Deckard Shaw hacking his computer. They brutally fight, badly injuring Hobbs. Dom gets a package from Tokyo and Shaw calls, then the package explodes destroying the Toretto family house. Dom meets Hobbs about Shaw. Brian hides Mia and Jack at a friend's and Dom goes to Tokyo to bring back Han's body. At Han's funeral Dom spots Shaw and chases him. Shaw lures Dom to a standoff, but a "Mr. Nobody" steps in and lets Shaw escape. Mr. Nobody briefs Dom of a kidnapped hacker Ramsey who created a powerful program, God's Eye, with the terrorist Jakande in the mix. Dom agrees to get the God's Eye in exchange for Shaw. The team's assembled with Letty added. They bring their cars parachuting from a cargo plane to reach the terrorist motorcade. They manage to free Ramsey but Shaw interferes. Dom, with Ramsey, and Shaw veers off road while Brian fights out of the motorcade with Letty saving him at the end. Shaw escapes but Dom gets cornered by the terrorists. He crashes his car down hill with the team saving him below.
Ramsey and the team goes to Abu Dhabi for the God's Eye. They go to a billionaire's penthouse party, which houses a hyper-car with its ECU containing the program. Letty sneaks into the man's room while Tej and Ramsey hack the security. Roman distracts the crowd as Dom and Brian sneak to the hyper-car. But Letty's caught by the bodyguards and the plan shifts. Dom and Brian decide to take car instead. Making matters worse, Shaw comes in. Dom brings the car flying through to the adjacent towers, jumping off as Brian nabs the ECU. The team gives God's Eye to Mr. Nobody after they use it to track Shaw. They go after Shaw but Shaw has Jakande as an ally and a shootout ensues. Mr. Nobody gets shot so Dom and Brian evacuate him, leaving Jakande to acquire the God's Eye. The team goes home, preparing for the enemy to come to them. The plan is to counter-hack the God's Eye and inserts a virus to it. The team circles around and Jakande's men picked up Dom, so Ramsey starts her hack. But she's made and the terrorists send a drone at her and Brian. They manage to escape but Brian loses his car and the terrorists blow up a signal tower, cutting Ramsey's hack so Brian manually climbs a building to restore the signal. Dom faces Shaw at a parking building's top while Ramsey gets transferred to Letty's car.
The drone almost had them but Hobbs comes and slams an ambulance at it. Ramsey completes her hack and the terrorists lost the God's Eye. Jakande in his helicopter finds Shaw and Dom and send a missile to the building, collapsing it. Shaw falls at the collapse and as Jakande aims at Dom, Hobbs barrages the helicopter with bullets. Dom gets some time and escapes as Jakande continues to collapse the building. Dom launches his car at the helicopter, throwing Shaw's grenades into it, and Hobbs finishes the job by shooting at the grenades. Hobbs, Brian and Letty races to see Dom unconscious, and Letty admits her memory has returned. Dom wakes up and Shaw gets arrested. The added epilogue is not for me to divulge for it gives me the real shivers.
The story is a very nice addition to the great saga. Impacted by the loss of Paul Walker, the story changes turn out to be quite unpredictable and very much emotional. The revealed Shaw revenge is actually only a small portion. Despite the obvious signs of the movies getting more and more strange in the action selection, the other main theme of family of the crew, including character depths and character relations, are really taken to a whole new level.
I like how the movie acknowledges the breadth of the story so far and didn't focus on adding new characters more and more. Although new characters are added, with big names playing them which feels like potential comebacks at future sequels, I see this seventh installment actually focuses more on the main character quartet of Dom, Brian, Mia and Letty, who have the most share of story depth and screen time. The story nicely play on reminiscing from the first movies. I also enjoyed how this movie connect Tokyo Drfit into the whole saga very nicely.
In any way, this movie leaves us with many potential for the next movie in line. And this is a good sign that the saga will continue even without Paul Walker. Throughout the movie I curious on those action sequences, about in which one will Brian meet his end. But I'm glad that Brian retires nicely and emotionally like that. Because if he's ended by dying, it will face Mia and Jack to a painful irony concerning something Brian said about his father from back in the fifth movie.
The action is done greatly despite the tendency to be more and more unbelievable. The fight scenes are also a great job, I really like the spinning cameras. The dialog gets more and more emotional at the right times. I'm glad Tyrese Gibson still plays his part very nicely as the crew's funny-man. The acting in overall is just at a standard level from all the cast members. The story so far, character relations, nostalgic points, and the emotional content are the things that make this movie a good and entertaining piece of action movie.
For me Furious 7 (2015) deserves and 8 out of 10 score and a recommendation. I maybe a bit biased I've following the series from it's first movie. But this movie manages to be good at the action side as well as the emotional side.