I’m not one of those guys from the videos who narrate 112 mistakes in 8 minutes in the blockbuster Hollywood blah blah. I don’t even want you to subscribe to my channel or share and watch any video. In fact, I’m scared for life going by the “furious” fan following for what I write below, scared really, for I sell mirrors in the city of the blind! Right now we have to deal with a heartbreak, as Paul walker has left us, mostly feeling empty. I’m flooded by ‘one last ride’ posts on my news feeds FB-Twitter everywhere, fed up also!
From the dextral beginning, it was evident that a big banner movie like Fast series will gradually lose its charm. I mean, come ‘on it’s been 7 movies up, “One last ride” here, is at a particular in a level of inconsistency that is completely disoriented. A movie with countless number of sequels can’t keep striking the right chords every single time, it’s got to “slow down” at some point, quite literally. To quote a brilliant critic James King, “put your brain back into neutral immediately – this is an ear-shattering revelry of detonation, crusade of mindless stunts, car rush in an un-specified direction, well-polished bumpers explosions, fist-fights and more explosions”. As a matter of fact, The Fast franchise has always been about surpassing its own envelop. It is sublime and unparalleled in a way that it makes you come back for more, the trick here is simple, make the film more terrific with death defying action than pervious, and well that’s what makes it work. James Wan officially succeeded to encompass blankness on our minds with some of the wackiest and craziest stunts ever. But I must say this, If I wanted to see a movie about super cars, cool gadgets and bullet dodging, centered around a secret agent, then I would go for the new Mission Impossible. Call me a hypocrite, I can’t wait for MI-6. Tom Cruise, mylove!
Very recently I saw Jupiter Ascending with really high hopes, with toned muscles and articulate tattoos, a gen-Z star like Channing Tatum (Chosen by “People” magazine as the Sexiest Man Alive in 2012) paired with the very stunning Mila Kunis, couldn’t sell a movie with jarring effects a class apart! It juggles down to the basic rules of movie making - it needs to have some substance in it. This one had some clever, canny editing making long scenes merge into one-another magically, that you couldn’t tell if it was Late Paul or his brothers Caleb Walker and Cody walker. Still it failed to deliver. The whole point of mentioning “Jupiter Ascending” was to hat-tip that there were these anti-gravity shoes that the mutant hunter (Channing Tatum) wears keeping him afloat a few inches above the ground, when the deceased hero (Paul Walker), runs up all over the sliding truck (or whatever the big vehicle is called) over the precipice. Didn’t I remember our own Thalaiva Sri Rajinikant, who probably makes more sense in his stunts than Dwayne Johnson does ripping off the cast and traction on his colored mighty muscular arms, having said that I need some air to breath, Gosh! He is so hot even at 40. If I have to believe in bullet splitting into two and hitting two targets at different trajectories, I also believe in hero running up the falling truck (please pardon my ignorance in big-vehicle names) over the long steep escarpment, he wasn’t even wearing the anti-gravity boots which mutant in the former movie wore. Cliffhanger, eh? Not to forget, the airplane scene when the characters, all armed, ride backwards out of the plane in their cars was hilarious bungee jumping sorts, summery of these two scenes, RIP gravity. No kidding Newton.
The fight sequences in "Furious 7" are dextral quirky and haphazard, making it difficult to tell who is fighting who and which fist is which, this in an unorthodox fashion, mellows down the adrenaline rush, that is, if you felt anything in the whole 140 odd minutes ever. Packed with ludicrous stunts, non-consequential events, the characters getting away without a scratch or cut wound despite falling off cliffs and airplanes, hilarious bullet dodging sequences, which is no better than Afro-Circus of Madagascar. Dom’s most chucklesome line is the last one: “You think this is gonna be a street fight? You’re goddamn right it is!” this really got the Brownie points!! To which, Shaw replies swinging the club like some monster unleashed! Quite a scene. Jason Statham is a badass and entertaining villain, enough said.
As for Vin Diesel, alas, he didn’t sparkle. He started with a terrific head on collision, which sure was like the epic scene in the whole furious movie, which left me gaping for me, an unquenchable thirst. Jason Statham, you wait please. I counted more cars flying than bullets did! But that was all. Rest was the comical Gibson cracking jokes about taking down a plane earlier once and this time refusing to dangle (bungee jump in the car, basically) out of a plane, again.
Ramsey is really hot and all that, too hot for a hacker, they even claim in the movie itself she is rightfully objectified and that is what she probably looks her best at, that oomph, but whatever happened to “waterproof mascara” people? Ramsey, gets over shadowed by Letty (Mrs. Alpha), when she steals a moment in the elevator with Dominic in the full fledge Red evening dress, setting off what she chooses to keep hidden all through the movie. All you men, Roger that.
They arrive in Abu Dhabi, to espionage (technically acquire) God’s eye. Ali Fazal, best known or rather only known for his ‘Joy Lobo’ role in 3 idiots puts up his ‘idiot’ act in a fake Arabic accent, trying to explain millionaires can actually take their luxury cars to their luxury suites, point noted! Let’s go the middle east to test the gravity of this statement or do ‘dharana’ with Kejriwal, if they don’t let us take our cars inside the suites. It is at this point that I decided James Wan was giving us not a film aiming at stunts as its foundation, but a preposterous fable of make believe-disjointed-tacky plot. Yet the potentially groundbreaking role of the Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) starts with light humor, and is eventually completely ignored once God’s eye is acquired. There are ruthless scenes in the movie, one like Shaw trying to send Dom a package and giving him a heads up, the whole house is burnt to cinders, but not a scratch on anyone in the vicinity, wah Dominic bhai, kya khaye breakfast mein? Coming back to Jason Statham, the villain you will fall in love with, is out for vengeance, the balance he strikes between being loathsome and handsome, irresistible is the striking. That you simply can’t take your eyes off him, who is roaming freely (apparently rogue special forces assassin) in the Tokyo and follows Dom like a shadow even to the mystique Abu Dhabi and walks in all armed, only to crash the birthday party of Prince of Abu Dhabi. Some serious security concerns back there? Must say, he was well dressed, would it count as brownie points. There is a Russian dame, something to look awed about at last, the security guard who apparently is bored to death. And there are scenes dripping drily with the tense humor, parody mostly.
By the end, the movie is slowly marred by somewhat dumb action scope and preposterous emotional core, like Vin Diesel being brought back to life miraculously by his amnesic girlfriend (You die, I die remember?) after his unbelievable ‘street fight’ with Statham. “I don’t remember anything”, with a scene like that, I don’t want to remember anything, I’m sorry, and that was a face-palm moment.
There was a time, when even brutal and brilliant Bond movies became imbecilic and emotional, Skyfall, for example. In which M dies, 007 gets all teary and starts to weep over her body, making it by far the most candified film of the franchise. My best friend who was alongside said, why life has to be so unfair, to wallop from the everyday errands we end up watching movies which are supposed to entertain us, but they employ emotion as weapon even in gruff spy-suspense-thriller movies! Genre shift alert from action-thriller to emotional drama. The whole world seems to be torn apart, even a Bond movie has started to sell on the grounds of sentiment?! Having said that, there is emotional outrage in this movie, in a particular scene, while at Han’s funeral, Brian says, ‘there will be just one more funeral, and it is his(Shaw he means)’, Paul didn’t know, it was his own! Did it go unnoticed? Sometimes, the irony hits hard.
It is the final film that Paul Walker appears in, (while he died in an unrelated car crash which seems like it was only paradox), leaving us with a silent message that he actually didn’t defy death, unlike his movies which portrays him as invincible, take this down in bold and underlined font “speed kills”! In the last 8 odd minutes tribute to ‘family man’ who is now, only a memory, crew furious delivers the most touching performance and while doing one of the best farewell tribute to a late actor that Hollywood has ever seen. I wept for a whole 30 minutes. There are no Goodbyes! Already they have announced the next in the series. I hope they miss you, Paul, as much as we all do. For Dom says, ‘No matter where you are, you will always be with me and you will always be my brother’, even when my eyes welled up, I could see the whole cinema hall was dead quiet and many a sniffs and sobs and wet hankies.
So long, Paul, sultan of the speed. Thank you, do please keep watching over us from wherever you are. Because there are no goodbyes!
