A ‘Furious 7’ Review by Someone Who Has Not Seen the Previous Movies

I don’t know anything about the Fast & Furious franchise, except that it’s a series of movies about fast cars and racing. I sat down and watched the seventh film in the franchise and wrote a Furious 7 review without any knowledge whatsoever of the previous films.

As always, here’s a SPOILER WARNING for everything beyond this point.

Furious 7 is the seventh film in the Fast & Furious franchise where they managed to stretch a rap music video across seven films. This British Secret Service Bald Guy (Jason Statham) wants revenge at this group of car owners for crippling his brother from the previous film. Or something. British Bald Guy also basically wrecks the hospital his brother is confined in. I don’t know how hospitals work, but I think if you want to keep your brother alive, you don’t blow up half the hospital and kill some of the people who work to keep your brother alive.

Anyway, British Secret Service Bald Guy breaks into Wrestler/Cop Bald Guy’s (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) office and steals information that can help him get revenge for his brother. Wrestler Bald Guy tells British Secret Service Bald Guy to stop hacking into his computer, even though British Service Bald Guy is already on the Wrestler Bald Guy’s computer and was just basically copying files into a USB drive.

So the information that British Secret Service Bald Guy picked up led him to Main Protagonist Bald Guy (Vin Diesel), Amnesia Girl (Michelle Rodriguez), Sometimes Real/Sometimes CGI Paul Walker, Noisy Bald Guy (Tyrese Gibson), and Ludacris. After surviving several attempts on his life, Main Protagonist Bald Guy teams up with this secret agent named Mr. Nobody  (Kurt Russell), who isn’t ready to let go of the mIRC handle he used way back in 1997.

They now have to find a MacGuffin called God’s Eye from Improbable Hacker Chick (Nathalie Emmanuel) to track down British Secret Service Bald Guy and they go around the world in their loud noisy cars and rap video-style transitions to commit some shenanigans.

Furious 7 is fun, loud, and not the least bit subtle. Cars were driven off cliffs, buildings, planes, and into each other and their occupants survive unscathed. I honestly enjoyed it, even though most of the lines from the non-action parts of the film made me cringe so hard. I still don’t understand the characters’ motivations, although I’m pretty sure Vin Diesel and Paul Walker’s characters have had the most homoerotically-charged relationship in an action movie since Top Gun.

But whatever, I enjoyed the hell out of Furious 7, and I’m sure as hell ready to turn off my brain and enjoy the spectacle of cars crashing into each other and blowing up shit the next time a Fast & Furious movie comes along.