I know this might lose me a lot of credibility when it comes to the snobbier cineastes out there, but I really enjoyed this movie. It is absolutely and without a doubt as dumb as they come, but it knows this and embraces it. It is a giant cartoon that knows what we want and delivers it over and over again. It gives us those moments that only cinema can provide. We are never going to get to see parachuting cars or have a chance to soar between skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi, but this movie allows us to leave reality behind for a little while and just embrace that part of our lizard brain that loves explosions.
Having said all of this, Furious 7 is not going to win the Oscar that Vin Diesel has predicted. Unlike the 5th and 6th films in the series that benefited from the honestly touching relationship between Sung Kang and Gal Gadot, this film unfortunately remains in emotional neutral. Though it tries really hard to be poignant, all of the emotion in this film comes from the fact that we know Paul Walker is no longer with us. None of it is really earned. Fortunately none of this gets in the way of the bombast we really came for.
To those of you not willing to take this ride I leave you with a quote from The Simpsons: "Look at those poor saps back on land with their "laws" and "ethics". They'll never know the simple joys of a monkey knife fight."
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