Movie Review: Furious 7

Furious 7 certainly delivered (perhaps, over-delivered) in terms of souped-up, revved-up and ‘roided-up adrenaline-pumping uber ridiculous cinematic campiness. However, try as hard as it did, it clearly didn’t live up to the pure action movie magic that made Fast Five such a modern action movie classic.

Like Furious 6, it floundered in this regard. The cameos by DJimon Hounsou, Iggy Azalea and Ronda Rousey did nothing to advance the storyline and were totally pointless as this installment of the franchise didn’t need D-grade star cameos to fly in the box office.

Another disappointment was the limited screentime for Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs. It goes without saying that his portrayal of “Samoan Thor” Luke Hobbs in Fast 5 was a major contribution to the revamping of the franchise.

The hint at possible romance between Hobbs and Elena early on in the movie was rather anti-climactic in the way it was inexplicably dropped.

Furious 7 tried too hard to recreate some of the magic of Fast 5 and mostly did not succeed.

The roof top fight scene between Vin Diesel and Jason Statham was a throw back to the warehouse fight scene between Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in Fast 5.

The several cheezy one-liners were more cringe-worthy than a homage to the memorable cheezy one liners in Fast 5.

On a positive note though, Bryan O’Conner’s cliffhanger running escape, the air-drop sequences and the double skyscraper Lykan Hypsersport crash were unique and would be hard to top. In the end, there’s good reason to continue the franchise. 7/10