Furious 7 is a movie where Vin Diesel drives on top of Jason Statham’s car, where Iggy Azalea cameos for all of five seconds as “Racer Girl,” where Ronda Rousey and Michelle Rodriguez fight in dresses at a billionaire’s party in Abu Dhabi, where THE ROCK FLEXES HIS ARM SO HARD HIS CAST FALLS OFF. It’s ridiculous and goofy, and at a midnight SXSW screening, after a long day of brisket ingestion, I was entertained the whole goddamned time. Even Vin and Michelle’s sappy-music scenes were captivating, if you focus on Vin trying to ACT.
But there’s one scene in particular that deserves as many Oscars as Vin has Facebook fans. It’s about middway through the film, a film that I’m going to let Danger and/or Vince fully review in April; when it comes to the Fast & Furious franchise, they’re Dominic and Brian, I’m an extra who gets out of their way while they’re going 100 MPH in Miami or Juneau or wherever.
The exact notes I wrote during the approximately 10-minute, James Wan-directed scene:
-Airplanes
-Sh*t talking
-Tyrese diapers
-Corona keg
-Exposition
-In reverse
-Parachute
-Machine guns back of cars
-Men thrown off cars
-Explosions
–Game of Thrones girl
-Hanging on car for minutes
-Jason Statham smirk
-Cars hitting logs
-Over hills
-Cliffs
-Drivers being shot
-Jumping onto car
-20 cars converging
-Helmet
Now, that may not sound like much, but it’s hard taking notes during a Fast & Furious action scene; if you look down at the notepad that you’re scribbling on for even a second, you miss about 29 deaths and 46 explosions. I wanted to miss NOTHING. It begins with the already-infamous plane drop. Then, exciting chases, inexplicable machine guns, a rocket launcher, Game of Thrones‘ Missandei being thrown from moving vehicles, an absurd number of casualties, stupidly entertaining one-liners, Statham being the best (he and the Rock are the MVPs of the film), a thrilling truck-teetering-over-a-cliff moment, and a lingering uneasiness of how the film was going to handle Paul Walker’s death. We were asked not to hint at what happens to his character, so all I’ll say is, Walker’s brothers helped “fill in small gaps left in production,” and it’s handled more skillfully than you might imagine, especially for a movie with dozens of close-ups of butts.
It’s so good that, honestly, much of the rest of the film is a letdown. Except for when the cast is in Abu Dhabi, which looks like the greatest city in the world, where everyone is a bikini model and $3.4 million cars are stored in penthouses.
In short, you should see Furious 7.
