It's all about Paul Walker in the seventh installment of the massively successful
street racing series, and that's just fine
The death of Paul Walker in
November 2013 cast a pall over the future of the lucrative Fast & Furious
franchise, which at that point was already halfway into production on its
seventh installment. Walker, the blond-haired, blue-eyed hunk that was one-half
dreamboat, one-half boy next door, had played a central role in five of the
first six films, along with partner in crime Vin Diesel, and it was unclear how
the production could continue despite his untimely departure.
Fortunately for the viewers, and for the pockets of distribution company
Universal Pictures, we live in an era of special effects for which an actor’s
absence is no longer an insurmountable obstacle, and so the effects artists went
to work to conjure a mostly performance out of Walker that would not have
appeared as seamless even just a few years ago. There are a few hiccups along
the way, but for the most part the film is as enjoyable as any of its
predecessors, even as it edges a little too close to James Bond excess, and the
final montage honoring Walker will tug at the heartstrings of anyone with a
pulse.
Rating: ***
Directed by
James Wan
With Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason
Statham and Dwayne Johnson
In Fast & Furious 7, the gang’s past
catches up with them, as Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of the
villain in Part 6, decides to takes revenge on his newly deceased sibling
by going after Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Walker) and the
rest of Toretto’s squad. Along the way, which takes them from Los Angeles to Abu
Dhabi and back again, they accumulate allies and foes as the screenplay attempts
to layer its thin plot with additional characters.
Director James Wan
only mildly accelerates our pulses with his action scenes, most of which have
major narrative gaps because it allows the good guy to arrive at the right
moment or the bad guy to stand on the right spot, thus concluding a fast
sequence of cuts and zooms in a way that resolves the tension but rides
roughshod over credibility.
Like the infamous tank-jumping scene in Fast
& Furious 6, which was panned by all and derided by most, this latest — and,
by the looks of it, final — installment in the franchise has a few scenes that
derive their entertainment value from being impossible. Not unlike many 007
films, or even that highway scene in Knight and Day, the film generates pleasure
when it goes a little off the rails. One of the biggest laughs, but also one of
the highlights, comes about 50 minutes into the film, when Walker makes an
impossible jump from a bus dangling over a cliff onto a car as it spins its
front end across the abyss to catch him in time.
Another 007-inspired
moment, in which a sexy woman steps out of the sea in slow motion while the
camera pans from her legs to her face, will be immediately recognizable as a
(deliberate) exaggeration and is sure to elicit a good-natured chortle from the
audience.
These kinds of scenes — silly at worst and unrealistic at best, but consequently all the more enjoyable — are unfortunately counterbalanced by shoddy camera work (one particular gimmick, repeated many times over, is to attach the camera to a falling body, thus creating the peculiar image of a static center with a dynamic outer core), multiple push-ins on women’s oh-so-unsubtly-exposed buttocks and quick cuts to mask the stand-ins that replaced Walker in post-production: his brothers, Cody and Caleb.
Of course, that last point of criticism will be contentious in the eyes of some, as the film could not have been completed without finding a solution to Walker’s absence. But in at least two fight scenes, we almost never see the characters’ faces, and one of those scenes takes place in a parking garage so dimly lit we are surprised the two men actually succeed in landing a punch. We accept this approach, because even those who have followed just a modicum of celebrity news the past few months would know the film was completed in large part without one of its leads.
This awareness is essential to our appreciation of the final scene, which packs a serious emotional punch as we see the veil being pulled back a little. Diesel doesn't quite break the fourth wall, but there is an unmistakable double farewell of sorts — in the world of the film and in world outside the film. These closing moments are made all the more poignant by our insight into the events behind the scenes and our knowledge that these two actors had shared the same diegesis for nearly a decade and a half.
Fast & Furious 7 is not a great film. Its final action sequence is overlong, story lines are badly cut together, the masking of the absent Walker is at times painfully obvious and some of the performances, like smooth-talking but dimwitted Roman (Tyrese Gibson) or the awkward blond agent Elena (Elsa Pataky), are caricatures that belong in a film with a Roman numeral “VII” attached to it.
However, as a tribute to Walker, who is as captivating at the age of 40 as he was as a 26-year-old, the film is a beautiful eulogy that ensures we remember him as Brian O'Conner, the policeman turned street racer, husband and father, whose friendship with Dominic Toretto grounded him when he needed stability and gave us endless adrenaline-pumping thrills over the years, for which we will be eternally grateful.
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