The high-octane and testosterone fuelled movie franchise continues with Fast and Furious 7 as the team return to the big screen for what has become the late Paul Walker’s “One Last Ride”.
The 7th movie in the series has moved a long way from Rob Cohen’s first movie back in 2001, the neon lit, nitro boosted street racing has all but been replaced by more of a crack espionage team movie with a touch of revenge.
Fast and Furious 7 sees Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) , Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and his family being hunted down one by one by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) after the death of his brother Owen (Luke Evens).
After defeating the international terrorist everyone went their separate ways, but with Deckard picking them off one by one, add to the mix a Somalian terrorist called Jakarde and a shady government official called “Mr. Nobody” (Kurt Russell), who are both competing with each other to steal a computer terrorism program called God’s Eye, that can turn any technological device into a weapon. Torretto must reconvene with his team to stop Shaw and retrieve the God’s Eye program while caught in a power struggle between terrorist and the United States government.
We all know what to expect with a Fast and Furious movie, amazing car chases, well choreographed fights scenes and stunts that just defy all logic in the physical world and Fast and Furious 7 is no exception,  including cars driving out of planes and even a hyper-car defying gravity by racing through three skyscrapers in Dubai, I kid you not!
With Paul Walker having only finished less than half of his filming for the movie, stunt doubles and CGI were used to complete the film following his death. Walker’s brothers Caleb Walker and Cody Walker were among the doubles, and also provided voice over for the character Brian O’Conner, I was looking to see these parts and although I’m not 100% sure on which they were, possibly the beach scene was Cody standing in for Paul, it didn’t distract me from Fast and Furious 7, so the flow of the film ran nicely.
As I mentioned earlier the franchise has moved so far away from the first film with the street racing and the films have become a story of family, loyalty and love, which is no bad thing as this is one of the key things that we saw building up right from the start of the movies with the Turreto character.
With the tragic loss of Paul Walker, it was nice to see that his departure from the film was done so nicely and I even found it quite emotional in those last scenes of the film, I know there were a few in the cinema during the midnight showing that were sniffing back some tears.
Fast and Furious 7 is certainly a wonderful send off for Paul Walker and with the movie running at 2 hours and 17 minutes it is also the longest in the franchise, so far, there is also gossip that there will be another Fast and Furious movie, which could be the last one in the franchise, although it has also been mentioned, prior to Walker’s death that the movie would run to 10.
Overall Fast and Furious 7 is a an all out action movie, with lots of fun thrown in for good measure, which usually comes from Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and his words of wisdom, so I totally enjoyed the film, although it may not be the best in the franchise, it certainly didn’t seem like over two hours had passed by the time it had finished, it did seem shorter even if I did leave the cinema at 2:30 in the morning.
Karen Woodham is the founder and owner of the Blazing Minds. She is also a Cinema reviewer and works with RealD 3D reviewing the latest 3D releases and IMAX, she has also had several articles published in various publications including the first edition of SFW Magazine. In 2015 she became an Award Winning Blogger and also has her website listed as one of the UK’s Top 10 Film Blogs.
