Furious
Furious Seven (2015) and The Fate of the Furious (2017) up the ante in terms of cinematic action insanity. Each film in the (so far) eight part franchise builds from the previous entry in action set pieces, topping the last entry in excitement but also in improbability and outright impossibility.
The Fast and the Furious (2001), the first film in the series, wild and at times hard to swallow as it is, is realism when compared with the seventh and eighth films. Furious Seven features Paul Walker's final performance as former FBI agent Brian O'Conner. The actor's death at the age of forty in a car accident occurred while he was still working on the film, necessitating some body doubling, except I couldn't tell when this occurs in the movie. His role does seem reduced from what it should've been, considering his major contributions to the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth movies.
Vin Diesel picks up a lot of the slack caused by Walker's death. As bald and meaty Dom Toretto, he takes on the task of going after and stopping the mystery man, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), as the latter seeks to eliminate the team (Toretto's) that severely injured his brother, Owen, in a previous film.
Shaw, early on, puts bald and meaty DSS agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in the hospital. Shaw, a retired U.K. special forces man, has the fighting skills of an enraged tiger. When he and Toretto fight in the climactic scene, it's again a pair of bald men beating each other nearly to death on the top floor of a parking structure in Manhattan. Meanwhile, on the streets, antagonists in a black helicopter chase the cars driven by Team Toretto, seeking Ramsey, a beautiful African-American hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel) who invented a technological marvel, the God's Eye, a device capable of finding anyone on Earth using phones, ATMs, surveillance cameras, cross-referencing and bouncing signals off of regular citizens' devices to locate targets.
Here, the Furious franchise has entered territory explored by science fiction novelist William Gibson. With Gibson, the subject is serious and believable, but in this film it's a theme wrapped up in a cartoonish universe that touches shallowly on the foibles of modern surveillance technology and the violation of privacy. The first film in the series dealt somewhat seriously--I have to give it props for trying--with the anarchic view and lifestyle contrasted with the forces of governmental control. Now, Toretto's group works with the fucking government. Granted, they have reasons for doing so that are motivated by their desire to be free.
Still, they get dragged back into helping the government again in The Fate of the Furious, the eighth and first post-Paul Walker film. This one is wild and action-packed enough that it's easy to set Walker aside in the mind, although I did want him to be in it, playing his, by the sixth entry, well-developed character.
Another loss is the drastically reduced presence, in the seventh and eighth films, of Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster). She's with Brian O'Conner in the Dominican Republic, referred to in the eighth film as being happy there with him, in peace with their young son and a daughter on the way. Jordana Brewster is one of my favorite performers in the earlier films, so it's too bad she got stuck playing a stay at home mom in action movies. What is there for her to do, except be worried, waiting for news?
Michelle Rodriguez as Letty, Toretto's girlfriend, also doesn't have a lot to do in Seven and Fate. The actress reportedly expressed a desire to not do more of these movies because the women's roles were so subordinate to the men's. In The Fate of the Furious I can see what she's talking about. As Letty, who's developed amnesia after nearly being killed by Deckard Shaw in an earlier entry, her subsequent storyline, even if preposterous, gets increasingly short shrift so that by the time she says, "I remember everything" to her man, Dom Toretto, I'm struck by how this anamnesis comes apparently from nowhere, just as her amnesia did several films back.
I suspect that Michelle Rodriguez's interior storyline got edited heavily, lending weight to her complaint about the role of women in these greasy, muscular, rubber-burning films. Even Letty's views on finding out that Toretto has a son by a previous girlfriend aren't provided to us. Yes, I sympathize with Michelle Rodriguez's views on the subject of women in this film franchise.
Jason Statham makes a good villain, but in the eighth film he's turned into one of the team, working even with his enemy, Hobbs. Helen Mirren of all people shows up in two scenes in Fate. Charlize Theron as the ultimate hacker, Cipher, is the villain in that film. She's horrible, sociopathic, wants to rule the world, has a plan involving Toretto whom she blackmails. She's kidnapped his former lover and their little son and will have them killed if he doesn't cooperate. He plays ball with Cipher, causing Hobbs to utter, "I hate to say this, but I'm afraid Toretto's gone rogue."
She directs Toretto to steal the Russian "football" containing nuclear launch codes. She'll commandeer a nuclear submarine in a breakaway republic from the Russian Federation and launch a nuke at a major city, New York probably, and then, being an unfindable rogue, she'll have the major powers by the balls. This insane plot is, amazingly, outmatched by the insane action scenes at the film's climax. An ice sheet, a chase with cars, snowmobiles, the submarine. Hobbs at one point gets out of his vehicle and boot-skates, holding onto the truck's frame and door while one of the team steers and presses the accelerator. Hobbs manhandles a torpedo sliding along the surface of the frozen bay and directs it at one of the pursuing vehicles. It's fucking crazy, and impossible, and funny.
According to IMDb, a ninth movie is scheduled for 2020, a tenth and supposedly final one for 2021. My guess is that Charlize Theron will appear in the ninth film. Paul Walker, sadly, will not.
Furious Seven ends with a well done tribute to Walker. It's not corny, it's not in bad taste, it works well within the framework of the seventh film and also within the entire series thus far. It utilizes some earlier footage from, I think, the fourth film, and shows a montage of some of Walker's moments with Toretto narrating some thoughts on Brian O'Conner, who has found peace, finally, with his wife, Mia, and their son and future daughter. Brian and Dom prepare in the end to race on a Dominican Republic road. After a while, a helicopter shot shows the two cars going separate ways, a visually touching moment showing Brian going home to his family, but also Paul Walker going to wherever he went when he died on November 30, 2013, in Santa Clarita, California.
I got choked up at the end of Furious Seven; proof that yes, a big dumb expensive movie can possibly make me cry. The American director, Samuel Fuller, says in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou, "A film is like a battleground. It has love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotions."
The eight films so far of the Fast and Furious saga have all of these characteristics identified by Fuller. This could have something to do with why they've made more than five billion dollars.
Vic Neptune
Furious Seven (2015) and The Fate of the Furious (2017) up the ante in terms of cinematic action insanity. Each film in the (so far) eight part franchise builds from the previous entry in action set pieces, topping the last entry in excitement but also in improbability and outright impossibility.
The Fast and the Furious (2001), the first film in the series, wild and at times hard to swallow as it is, is realism when compared with the seventh and eighth films. Furious Seven features Paul Walker's final performance as former FBI agent Brian O'Conner. The actor's death at the age of forty in a car accident occurred while he was still working on the film, necessitating some body doubling, except I couldn't tell when this occurs in the movie. His role does seem reduced from what it should've been, considering his major contributions to the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth movies.
Vin Diesel picks up a lot of the slack caused by Walker's death. As bald and meaty Dom Toretto, he takes on the task of going after and stopping the mystery man, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), as the latter seeks to eliminate the team (Toretto's) that severely injured his brother, Owen, in a previous film.
Shaw, early on, puts bald and meaty DSS agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in the hospital. Shaw, a retired U.K. special forces man, has the fighting skills of an enraged tiger. When he and Toretto fight in the climactic scene, it's again a pair of bald men beating each other nearly to death on the top floor of a parking structure in Manhattan. Meanwhile, on the streets, antagonists in a black helicopter chase the cars driven by Team Toretto, seeking Ramsey, a beautiful African-American hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel) who invented a technological marvel, the God's Eye, a device capable of finding anyone on Earth using phones, ATMs, surveillance cameras, cross-referencing and bouncing signals off of regular citizens' devices to locate targets.
Here, the Furious franchise has entered territory explored by science fiction novelist William Gibson. With Gibson, the subject is serious and believable, but in this film it's a theme wrapped up in a cartoonish universe that touches shallowly on the foibles of modern surveillance technology and the violation of privacy. The first film in the series dealt somewhat seriously--I have to give it props for trying--with the anarchic view and lifestyle contrasted with the forces of governmental control. Now, Toretto's group works with the fucking government. Granted, they have reasons for doing so that are motivated by their desire to be free.
Still, they get dragged back into helping the government again in The Fate of the Furious, the eighth and first post-Paul Walker film. This one is wild and action-packed enough that it's easy to set Walker aside in the mind, although I did want him to be in it, playing his, by the sixth entry, well-developed character.
Another loss is the drastically reduced presence, in the seventh and eighth films, of Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster). She's with Brian O'Conner in the Dominican Republic, referred to in the eighth film as being happy there with him, in peace with their young son and a daughter on the way. Jordana Brewster is one of my favorite performers in the earlier films, so it's too bad she got stuck playing a stay at home mom in action movies. What is there for her to do, except be worried, waiting for news?
Michelle Rodriguez as Letty, Toretto's girlfriend, also doesn't have a lot to do in Seven and Fate. The actress reportedly expressed a desire to not do more of these movies because the women's roles were so subordinate to the men's. In The Fate of the Furious I can see what she's talking about. As Letty, who's developed amnesia after nearly being killed by Deckard Shaw in an earlier entry, her subsequent storyline, even if preposterous, gets increasingly short shrift so that by the time she says, "I remember everything" to her man, Dom Toretto, I'm struck by how this anamnesis comes apparently from nowhere, just as her amnesia did several films back.
I suspect that Michelle Rodriguez's interior storyline got edited heavily, lending weight to her complaint about the role of women in these greasy, muscular, rubber-burning films. Even Letty's views on finding out that Toretto has a son by a previous girlfriend aren't provided to us. Yes, I sympathize with Michelle Rodriguez's views on the subject of women in this film franchise.
Jason Statham makes a good villain, but in the eighth film he's turned into one of the team, working even with his enemy, Hobbs. Helen Mirren of all people shows up in two scenes in Fate. Charlize Theron as the ultimate hacker, Cipher, is the villain in that film. She's horrible, sociopathic, wants to rule the world, has a plan involving Toretto whom she blackmails. She's kidnapped his former lover and their little son and will have them killed if he doesn't cooperate. He plays ball with Cipher, causing Hobbs to utter, "I hate to say this, but I'm afraid Toretto's gone rogue."
She directs Toretto to steal the Russian "football" containing nuclear launch codes. She'll commandeer a nuclear submarine in a breakaway republic from the Russian Federation and launch a nuke at a major city, New York probably, and then, being an unfindable rogue, she'll have the major powers by the balls. This insane plot is, amazingly, outmatched by the insane action scenes at the film's climax. An ice sheet, a chase with cars, snowmobiles, the submarine. Hobbs at one point gets out of his vehicle and boot-skates, holding onto the truck's frame and door while one of the team steers and presses the accelerator. Hobbs manhandles a torpedo sliding along the surface of the frozen bay and directs it at one of the pursuing vehicles. It's fucking crazy, and impossible, and funny.
According to IMDb, a ninth movie is scheduled for 2020, a tenth and supposedly final one for 2021. My guess is that Charlize Theron will appear in the ninth film. Paul Walker, sadly, will not.
Furious Seven ends with a well done tribute to Walker. It's not corny, it's not in bad taste, it works well within the framework of the seventh film and also within the entire series thus far. It utilizes some earlier footage from, I think, the fourth film, and shows a montage of some of Walker's moments with Toretto narrating some thoughts on Brian O'Conner, who has found peace, finally, with his wife, Mia, and their son and future daughter. Brian and Dom prepare in the end to race on a Dominican Republic road. After a while, a helicopter shot shows the two cars going separate ways, a visually touching moment showing Brian going home to his family, but also Paul Walker going to wherever he went when he died on November 30, 2013, in Santa Clarita, California.
I got choked up at the end of Furious Seven; proof that yes, a big dumb expensive movie can possibly make me cry. The American director, Samuel Fuller, says in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou, "A film is like a battleground. It has love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotions."
The eight films so far of the Fast and Furious saga have all of these characteristics identified by Fuller. This could have something to do with why they've made more than five billion dollars.
Vic Neptune
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